"I'm Philippa," I replied, "and this is my cousin Lucy. We've never been to school before; we had a governess at home." "All the better for you," put in the tall girl in the blue dress whom the others called Millicent Holmes. "Mrs. Marshall never likes girls who come from other schools. She says she has to teach them everything all over again." "That's just to make you think her ways are better than anyone else's," said Ellinor Graham. "I've had five music masters, and every one has put me back to the beginning, and told me the others didn't know how to teach." "Then you'll get put back again this term," laughed Blanche Greenwood. "For Herr Goldschmidt has gone home to Germany, and we're to have an Italian, named Signor Salviati, instead." "No!" cried the girls with thrilling interest. "Have you seen him? What's he like?" "Oh, don't excite yourselves! He's not a romantic-looking Italian, with long curls and a twisted moustache; he's a nasty little fat oily kind of a man, with a pointed beard, who looks as if he could be horribly cross if you played wrong notes." "How disgusting!" cried the others. "Are there any other changes?" "Miss Buller is to have the fourth class," said Blanche, who seemed to be the general fund of information. "Janet, Beatrice, and Olave are on the early-morning practising list for this month" (groans from Janet, Beatrice, and Olave at the bad news), "the Simpsons have the bedroom at the end of the passage, with the balcony, and Miss Percy is to take the sewing this term." "What a nuisance!" lamented Janet. "She's _so_ particular! I can never make my stitches small enough to satisfy her. I hate poking over sewing. I wish we went to Ecclestone, where our cousins go, it's exactly like a boys' public school; they have a matron to do all the mending, and the girls play football." "I know they do," said Millicent, "and Mother says it is _most_ unladylike. We know several girls who go there, and they behave so badly, sitting on the edges of the drawing-room tables, and gulping their tea, and bolting their cake, and talking the most atrocious slang." "My sister goes to St. Chad's," said Ellinor Graham, "and they weigh the girls every time they go back. They won't let them do any work if they're not 'up to standard', and Patty's so thin that she's always 'turned out to grass', as they call it, for at least a fortnight at the beginning of each term. I think she has a lovely time." "Yes, but you have to wear the school costume at St. Chad's, even in church," put in Doris. "And it's ever so ugly--a blue serge dress with no shape in it, a plaid golf-cape, and a cricket-cap. I shouldn't like that at all!" and she smoothed down her pretty dress with evident satisfaction. "You haven't yet told us what class you're to be put in," said Blanche Greenwood, turning to Lucy and myself, who had been listening with much interest to the conversation.