The five heads pressed still more curiously against the pane, and five pairs of eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon the young girl who was daintily picking her way round the corner of the Square. The fur cap left her face fully exposed to view, and, true to Betty's prophecy, as she reached a certain point in the road she turned her head over her shoulder and shot a quick glance at the window overhead. Quicker than lightning the pretty head went round again, and the pink cheeks grew crimson at the sight of those five eager faces watching her every movement. Jack and Jill burst into loud laughter, Betty's upper lip curled derisively, but Miles' thin face showed an answering flush of colour, and he backed into the room, exclaiming angrily-- "I say, this is too much of a good thing! I don't know what you all mean by swarming round me wherever I go! Why can't you leave a fellow alone? Can't I even look out of the window without having you all on my back? A nice effect it must have to see the whole place blocked up, as if we were staring at a Lord Mayor's show!" Betty sat down by the table and took up the blouse on which she had been working for the last three months. The sleeves had been taken out and replaced twice over, and the collar-band obstinately refused to come right. By the time it was finished it would be hopelessly out of date, which Betty considered as one of the many contrary circumstances of life which continually thwarted her good endeavours. "Don't worry yourself. She will enjoy being stared at!" she said coldly. "She knows we watch her coming in and out, and shows off all her little tricks for our benefit. She's the most conceited, stuck-up, affected little wretch I ever saw, without a thought in her head but her clothes, and her own importance. I wouldn't have anything to do with her for the world!" "Jolly good thing then that you are never likely to get a chance! Her people will never trouble to call upon us; they are much too high and mighty. That's no reason, though, why you should be so down on the poor little soul. I should have thought that you would have felt sorry for her, cooped up with that old governess all her time, with not a soul to keep her company! But girls are such cads--they never play fair."