As I took my place in class I observed that all the girls stared at me; and after staring, one whispered to another, and then they stared again. It was really very confusing. After a time I did not like it. I thought they were impertinent. I could have borne with the stares and all the nudges and the whispers if I had been wearing my dark-blue dress with the grey fur, for I should have put down the curious behaviour of my schoolfellows to the fact of the dress: they were admiring the dress; they were jealous of the dress. But I had gone to school that morning just the ordinary Dumps--Dumps in clothes she had grown out of, Dumps with a somewhat untidy head, Dumps with her plain face. Why should the girls look at me? It was not possible that the good food I had eaten and the happy life I had led at Miss Donnithorne's could have made such a marvellous difference in so short a time--just about three days and a half. But my lessons were more absorbing than usual, and I forgot the girls. In the playground I resolved to avoid the Swans, and in order to do this I went up to Augusta Moore and slipped my hand through her arm. "Do let us walk about," I said, "and let us be chums, if you don't mind." "Chums?" said Augusta, turning her dreamy, wonderful eyes upon my face. "Yes," I said. "But chums have tastes in common," was her next remark. "Well, you are very fond of books, are you not?" I said. "Fond of books!" cried Augusta. "Fond of books! I love them. But that is not the right word: I reverence them; I have a passion for them." She looked hurriedly round her. "I shall never marry," she continued in a low whisper, "but I shall surround myself with books--the books of the great departed; their words, their thoughts, shall fill my brain and my heart. I shall be satisfied; nothing else will satisfy me but books, books, books!" "Do come to this corner of the playground," I said. "You speak as though you were reciting, and if you raise your voice the least bit in the world some one will hear you, and we shall have a crowd round us." She obeyed me. She was in a world of her own. As I looked at her I thought she was marvellously like the Professor in her mind. "It is a dreadful pity," I said. "What is a pity?" she asked. "That you are not me, and I am not you." "Oh dear," she said, "how you do mix things up! How could I be you?" "Well, if you lived with the Professor--if you were his child--you'd have books; you'd live in the world you love." Her eyes lit up then. They really were fine eyes, although she was--I could not help feeling it--a most provoking girl. "That would be paradise," she said. "But that can never happen. It never does happen. Men like your marvellous, your wonderful father have commonplace children like you. Now I, who have all the instincts and all that soul within me that just burns for books, and books alone, have a painfully commonplace mother. It is a mixed world. It is painfully mixed."