At tea-time Miss Poppleton's accustomed place was empty, and speculation ran high among her pupils. All kinds of wild rumours circulated round the table, but there was no means of verifying any of them, and the girls were obliged to go to preparation with their curiosity still unsatisfied. At seven o'clock, however, when the Juniors had finished their work and trooped back to their own sitting-room, they found the mystery solved. In front of the fire, warming her hands between the bars of the high fender, and looking as comfortably at home as if she owned the place, stood the stranger who had skipped so quickly out of the cab that afternoon. She was a girl who, wherever she was seen, would have attracted notice--slim and erect and trim in figure, and a decided brunette, a real "nut-brown maid", with a pale olive complexion, the brightest of soft, dark, southern eyes, and a quantity of fluffy, silky, dusky curls, tied--American fashion--with two big bows of very wide scarlet ribbon, one on the top of her head and one at the nape of her neck. She smiled as the others entered, showing an even little set of white teeth, and four roguish dimples made their appearance at the corners of her mouth. She seemed to have assumed proprietorship of the room so entirely that the Juniors stopped short in amazement, too dumbfounded for the moment to do anything but stare. The stranger stepped forward with almost an air of welcome and, dropping a mock curtsy, announced herself. "Glad to make your acquaintance!" she began. "Miss Poppleton said she'd introduce me to the school, but I guessed I'd rather introduce myself--thought I'd do the thing better than she would, somehow. I don't like stiff introductions--I'm not at all a starchy sort of person, as I dare say you can see for yourselves; and I prefer to make friends after my own fashion. My name's Gipsy Latimer, and I'm American and British and Colonial and Spanish all mixed up, and I've travelled half round the world, and been in seven different schools, and I was fourteen last birthday, and I arrived here this afternoon, and I'm going to stop on a while, and I just adore cricket, and I detest arithmetic in any shape, and I'm always ready for any fun that's on the go. There! I've told you all about myself," and she curtsied again. The girls laughed. There was something decidedly attractive and breezy about the newcomer. Her dark eyes danced and twinkled as she spoke, and there was an unconventional jollity in the very high-pitched tone of her voice, and an infectious merriment in her dimples. "What did you say your name was?" asked Hetty Hancock, by way of making the first advances.