Left to herself, Pixie stole into the corridor and flattened herself into a doorway to watch the gay figures descending the staircase. The tidying away could wait for a few moments, but it was not often that one had the opportunity of watching so festive a scene. Doors opened on every side, and out they came, one girl after another, so smart and fine that one could hardly recognise them for the blue-serged damsels of ordinary school life. Down the stairs they tripped, with rustlings of silk and crinklings of muslin, dainty white shoes, looking daintier than ever against the well-worn carpet. Such a crowd of girls, and each one looking brighter and happier than the one before. Lottie in white, Margaret in blue, with her brown hair coiled round her head in a shining chestnut coronet, one after another, until at last there was no one left, and silence reigned in the corridor, broken only by a little sniff and sigh from the shadow of a doorway. "And one little p-ig stayed at h-ome," sighed Pixie, trying hard to laugh, and assiduously licking the tears from her cheeks, as she hung school skirts in the cupboards, and folded everyday garments on bedroom chairs, in readiness for use on the following day. "Now they are all sitting down and beginning to eat! There'll be nothing but jam and cakes and elegant bread-and-butter--so thin you might eat a plateful, and starve upon it! I wonder what they'll be sending me upstairs. I couldn't look at a bit of plain food, but plum cake would be medicine to me. Me digestion was always delicate. Bridgie said so. `The child needs tempting!' I've heard her say, over and over again, when the milk pudding came in at the door, and my appetite went out. I must go to the schoolroom now, I suppose, for Miss Phipps said I must be in my bed by seven. Ellen has the soft heart--I wouldn't wonder if she brought me something nice to cheer me spirits!" Buoyed up by this hope, she ran off to the classroom, and there was Ellen herself at the door, looking at her with such kind, sorry-looking eyes, as if there was nothing she would like better than to carry her bodily downstairs. "Your tea is ready, Miss Pixie. Miss Emily's orders were that I was not to bring you any cake, but I have brought something else that you will like better." What could that be? Pixie rushed to the table, and oh, joy of joys, there lay a big fat letter with the Bally William postmark in the corner, and Bridgie's dear, well-known writing straggling over its surface. No one in the world wrote such sweet letters as Bridgie, and how dear of her to time this one to arrive at the moment of all others when it was most desired! Pixie gloated over it with sparkling eyes, kissed it, hugged it, poked at it with her fingers to discover exactly how many sheets it might contain, and finally devoured it and the bread- and-butter together in one long beam of delight.