"Oh, don't you? Why, I _know_ it's possible." Belinda didn't argue the question. "I'm writing out a whole new will. The other was all mussy and scratched up from being changed so often. Doesn't that look neat?" She held up a sheet of paper which bore, in systematic grouping, a plan for filling the funeral carriages. Belinda glanced at it. "Why, where's George Pettingill?" she asked, with a twinkle in her eye. Amelia tossed her head. "If he goes to my funeral he can take the trolley," she said with profound indifference. "You see I've only put three people down for the first carriage. I thought I'd just leave one place vacant, in case----" "Exactly," said Belinda. Before the successor to the Columbia Sophomore appeared upon the horizon to complicate the carriage problem anew, the funeral fad had run its course and the wills of Amelia and her satellites had gone the way of all waste paper. CHAPTER X ADELINA AND THE DRAMA THE Youngest Teacher looked across the room at the new girl and tried to goad her conscience into action. New girls were her specialty. She was an expert in homesickness, a professional drier of tears and promoter of cheerfulness. When she really brought her batteries into action the most forlorn of new pupils wiped her eyes and decided that boarding-school life might have its sunny side. Gradually the Misses Ryder and Belinda's fellow-teachers had recognised the masterly effectiveness of her system and her personality, and had shifted the responsibility of "settling" the new girls to the Youngest Teacher's shoulders. As a rule, Belinda cheerfully bowed her very fine shoulders to the burden. She knew that as an accomplished diplomat she was of surpassing value, and that her heart-to-heart relations with the pupils were of more service than her guidance in the paths of English. She comforted the homesick, set the shy at ease, drew confidences from the reserved, restrained the extravagances of the gushing. But on this January evening she felt a colossal indifference concerning the welfare of girls in general and of new girls in particular--a strong disinclination to assume any responsibility in regard to the girl who sat alone upon the highly ornamental Louis Quinze sofa. The newcomer was good looking, in an overgrown, florid, spectacular fashion. Belinda took note of her thick yellow hair, her big blue eyes, her statuesque proportions. She noted, too, that the yellow hair was dressed picturesquely but untidily, that the big eyes rolled from side to side self-consciously, that the statuesque figure was incased in a too tightly laced corset.