Kit never forgot the first morning when the classes met in Assembly Hall, and the Dean addressed them on the work and aims of the coming year. For the life of her, she could not keep her mind on all he was saying or the solemnity of the moment, because, just at the very last minute when the chapel chimes stopped ringing, Marcelle Beaubien entered through the dark green swinging doors at the back of the big, crowded hall. It seemed as though every one's eyes were watching the platform, but Kit saw the slender, silent figure standing there alone. She was dressed in black, a thin black lawn, with collar and cuffs of dark red linen, and her heavy brown hair was braided in two long plaits down her back. She waited there, it seemed to Kit, expectant on the threshold of opportunity, not knowing which way to go, and without a friendly hand extended to her in welcome or guidance. Norma Riggs, who sat next to Kit, glanced back to see what had attracted her attention, and made a funny little deprecating sound with her mouth. "I never thought she'd have the nerve to really do it," she whispered. "Isn't she odd?" A quick impulsive wave of indignation swept over Kit, and she rose from her seat, passing straight down the aisle without even being aware of the curious glances which followed her. She took Marcelle by storm. "You're in my class, aren't you?" she whispered quickly. "It's right over here, and there's a seat beside me. I don't know any one either, and I'm so glad to see you, so I'll have some one to talk to." Marcelle never answered, but smiled with a quick flash of appreciation, the smile which always seemed to illumine her rather grave face. She followed Kit back to the latter's seat, and Norma exchanged glances with her right-hand neighbor, Amy Parker. Kit was altogether too new to realize just exactly what she had done. Being the Dean's grandniece, she considered herself unconsciously a privileged person. As a matter of course, Miss Daphne had accompanied her that morning, and introduced her to four or five girls in the sophomore "prep" class, who came from the representative best families of the town. Also, as a matter of course, she had been welcomed as one of them, but Kit, with her democratic notions, never even realized that she occupied one of the seats of the mighty, in a circle of the favored few, and that she had smashed all tradition by introducing into that circle a Beaubien. In fact, even if she had known, she would probably have been thoroughly indignant at any such spirit among the girls themselves. Jean and Helen were the natural-born aristocrats in the family, Kit always said. They loved to feel themselves aloof and not part of the populace. "The sedan chair and palanquin for both of you," Kit had been wont to say, scornfully, "but give me a good horse and a wide trail, or if I can't have the horse, I'll hike." And here she loved to quote Stevenson's "Vagabond" to them.