When Hildegarde was sixteen a new pupil appeared at the Valdivia School for Young Ladies. A little girl hardly twelve, delicate, pretty, appealing, yet self-sufficing; so backward in some of her studies, and so advanced in others, that she could not be entered in either the upper primary or lower academic classes, but was sent to recite arithmetic and geography with the infants, Latin with the first academic girls, and French with the second collegiates—young ladies four to six years older than little Bella Wayne. She was a boarder, and it was said her parents had put her under the special care of Miss Gillow, the principal. She even had special dishes cooked for her, and the fact that these “milk puddings” (as it seemed they were called) were plainer than the food set before the other boarders, did nothing to mitigate the offensiveness of the distinction. Certainly the principal accorded the “new girl” so many privileges that a strong party sprang up against her. Hildegarde, even before a certain day of wrath, had found herself unconsciously absorbed in watching this thin slip of prettiness, who looked as if a puff of wind would blow her away, who ought to have carried herself humbly, if not actually depressed, in her capacity of unclassifiable new-comer, and who yet walked about with her little nose in the air, as if she despised Valdivia, and especially scorned the critical young ladies of Valdivia’s celebrated school. It did not help her good standing that she showed herself indifferent to an opportunity of joining the Busy Bees. Now, the Busy Bees were a very popular organization which not only sewed on alternate Saturday afternoons at the rectory, but danced with an equal regularity, in various other places, and organized a bazaar once a year in the Masonic Hall. Besides the gaiety of this function, there was a fine flavor of philanthropy about the regular application of the proceeds to the clothing and educating of a little Hindu girl, who was able strangely soon to write pious letters to the young ladies of Valdivia—letters in which she seemed to get even with her benefactors by saying that she never forgot to pray for them. The Bees had had the joy of deciding by what name their protégé should be christened. As there were three Marys and six Trennors among them, the little Hindu was called Mary Trennor, and every properly constituted girl felt pledged for Mary Trennor’s material and spiritual welfare—that is, every girl in Valdivia whose fortunate social condition permitted her to aspire to wear the badge of the Golden Bee. It followed that the new girl was not properly constituted when she declined the honor. It was even apparent that her heart was not in the right place. For when Beatrice Trennor most forbearingly showed the new girl the framed photograph of the Hindu convert, in order to stimulate interest in the cause, Miss Bella Wayne turned from it with the observation, “She’s ugly. I shan’t do a single