And certainly Letizia did seem the most enormous creature to her mother when they met again, with her skirts half-way between her knees and her ankles and her dark-brown wavy hair in a tight pigtail. “Fancy, having a flapper for a daughter,” Nancy exclaimed. “I know, isn’t it too perfectly beastly, mother. I hope Sister Rose will let me fluff my hair out again. After all, I’m only just fifteen, and I don’t want to be grown up before I need be. But I don’t expect she will. She was always the strictest of the lot. I can’t _think_ why they made her head-mistress of St. Joseph’s.” Sister Rose felt that it was her duty to try and quell some of Letizia’s exuberance, and throughout the next year Nancy was getting letters from her daughter about “rows.” With all her strictness Sister Rose seemed much less capable than Sister Catherine of keeping her pupils in order; or perhaps it was that Letizia was now one of the big girls and consequently involved in much more serious escapades than those of the juniors. Then came the most tremendous row the school had ever known, according to Letizia. St. Joseph’s School, Sisters of the Holy Infancy, 5 Arden Grove, N. W., May 15, 1906. Darling Mother, There’s been the most frightful row, and it looks as if one or two of us will get the boot. I don’t think I shall because I’m not in up to the hilt. But it’s all very thunderous, and Reverend Mother has been sent for to deal with matters. What happened was this. You know the backs of the houses in Stanwick Terrace look down into our garden? Well, one of the girls—I’ll mention no names because a deadly system of espionage has been instituted—we’ll call her Cora which sounds an evil and profligate name. Cora met a youth, well, as a matter of fact, he’s not such a youth, because he’s left Cambridge. So he must be about 22. Cora met him during the Easter Hols, and was most fearfully smitten. So they arranged to correspond. In fact she considers herself engaged to him. Which of course is piffle, because she’s only sixteen. She asked me to be one of her confidantes now, and later on a bridesmaid, and get hold of her notes. Oh, I forgot to say that this youth lives in Stanwick Terrace. So, he used to put them under a flower-pot on the garden wall. But the silly idiots weren’t content with notes. They found that they could easily signal to one another from their rooms, and they arranged a code. Two candles in the window meant “My darling, I love you madly”; and all that sort of piffle. Cora used to work her messages with the blind, and I and Joan Hutchinson, the other girl who shares a room with her, got rather fed up with her pulling the blind up and down in a passionate ecstasy.