Mrs. Hancock, Connie’s mother, was Mamma’s dearest friend. That was why there had always been Connie. She could remember her, squirming and spluttering in her high nursery chair. And there had always been Mrs. Hancock, refined and mournful, looking at you with gentle, disappointed eyes. She was glad that Connie hadn’t been sent to her boarding-school, so that nothing could come between her and Priscilla Heaven. Priscilla was her real friend. It had begun in her third term, when Priscilla first came to the school, unhappy and shy, afraid of the new faces. Harriett took her to her room. She was thin, thin, in her shabby black velvet jacket. She stood looking at herself in the greenish glass over the yellow-painted chest of drawers. Her heavy black hair had dragged the net and broken it. She put up her thin arms, helpless. “They’ll never keep me,” she said. “I’m so untidy.” “It wants more pins,” said Harriett. “Ever so many more pins. If you put them in head downwards they’ll fall out. I’ll show you.” Priscilla trembled with joy when Harriett asked her to walk with her; she had been afraid of her at first because she behaved so beautifully. Soon they were always together. They sat side by side at the dinner table and in school, black head and golden brown leaning to each other over the same book; they walked side by side in the packed procession, going two by two. They slept in the same room, the two white beds drawn close together; a white dimity curtain hung between; they drew it back so that they could see each other lying there in the summer dusk and in the clear mornings when they waked. Harriett loved Priscilla’s odd, dusk-white face; her long hound’s nose, seeking; her wide mouth, restless between her shallow, fragile jaws; her eyes, black, cleared with spots of jade gray, prominent, showing white rims when she was startled. She started at sudden noises; she quivered and stared when you caught her dreaming; she cried when the organ burst out triumphantly in church. You had to take care every minute that you didn’t hurt her. She cried when term ended and she had to go home. Priscilla’s home was horrible. Her father drank, her mother fretted; they were poor; a rich aunt paid for her schooling. When the last midsummer holidays came she spent them with Harriett. “Oh-h-h!” Prissie drew in her breath when she heard they were to sleep together in the big bed in the spare room. She went about looking at things, curious, touching them softly as if they were sacred. She loved the two rough-coated china lambs on the chimney-piece, and “Oh--the dear little china boxes with the flowers sitting up on them.” But when the bell rang she stood quivering in the doorway. “I’m afraid of your father and mother, Hatty. They won’t like me. I _know_ they won’t like me.” “They will. They’ll love you,” Hatty said. And they did. They were sorry for the little white-faced, palpitating thing.