"In the fourth, I believe," said Lucy. "Mrs. Marshall said she expected we could both manage the work." "The fourth! That's to be Miss Buller's. Janet and Olave and I are in the same class, and Catherine Winstanley is to be monitress for the month. By the by, where is Cathy? Has no one seen her?" "Here!" said a voice from the door, and a slender girl of about thirteen came forward to join the group. She was a pretty girl, with long, curling brown hair, and a very graceful way of holding herself. Her pleasant manner and bright winning smile attracted me to her at once. Her dark eyes seemed familiar, and I wondered where I had seen them before, till in a sudden flash of remembrance I recalled how eyes just the same had looked into mine when Mrs. Winstanley had held me close in her arms, and told me she was my mother's friend. So this was the little daughter of whom she had spoken, and as I watched her I hoped with all my heart that we, too, might become friends. She seemed to be a general favourite, for there were many affectionate greetings between her and the other girls, and numerous interchanges of home and school news, but at length she turned to where Lucy and I were standing. "I think," she said, speaking to me, "that you must be Philippa Seaton. Mother told me you would be here, and that I was to look out for you. I suppose this is your cousin Lucy. I'm so glad that we're all to be in the same class. I hope your bedroom is near mine. Oh! there's the tea-bell, and we must go, but I shall see you again afterwards." She walked away, with her arm linked in that of Janet Forbes, and Lucy and I followed the others to the dining-room, where tea was being dispensed in an informal manner by Miss Buller and one of the under teachers. For this first meal there were no special places, and I found myself sitting at table next to a rather stout, rosy-cheeked girl, perhaps a year older than myself, whose name appeared to be Ernestine Salt. She moved very grudgingly to make room, but she did not speak to me, nor take any further notice. Lucy and I sat silently watching our thirty companions. It was all new and strange to us--the fresh faces, the school-girl chaff, the jokes and allusions to things of which we as yet knew nothing, and we wondered how long it would be before we could take our part in that lively conversation. "I never can eat anything the first night," declared one of the girls, mopping her eyes rather ostentatiously with a lace-edged pocket-handkerchief. "I'm always so terribly homesick, and they cut the bread so thick!" "Nothing spoils my appetite," proclaimed Ernestine Salt. "I'm so frightfully hungry, I shall eat your share. I didn't have half enough sandwiches on the journey, though I bought three oranges and two jam-tarts at the railway-station as well. Where is the bread-and-butter?"