"That's right--fire off your questions! I've been at seven schools before this, and everybody starts with the same catechism. I'm ready to answer anything within reason, but perhaps I'd best take a seat while you're at it. No, thanks! I prefer the table--always like the highest place, you see! I've sat on the mantel-piece before now. Yes, I said my name was Gipsy--G--I--P--S--Y." "But it's not your real name, surely?" "You weren't christened that?" "Only wish I had been! No, my godfather and godmothers didn't know their business, and they went and gave me the most outlandish, sentimental, ridiculous, inappropriate name you could imagine. You might try a dozen guesses, and you'd never hit on it. Don't you want to guess? Well, I'll tell you, then--it's Azalea." "Azalea--why, I think that's rather pretty," ventured Lennie Chapman. "Pretty enough in itself, perhaps, but it doesn't suit me. Do I look like an 'Azalea' with my dark hair and eyes? They should have had more sense when they christened me. Why, an Azalea ought to be a little, pretty, silly thing, with blue eyes and pink cheeks and golden hair--all beauty, you know, and no brains, like this girl! What's your name? You're more an Azalea than I am." "I'm Barbara Kendrick!" gasped that flaxen-headed member of the Upper Third, not quite knowing whether to be flattered or offended. "There you are--not a bit like a Barbara! Nothing in the least barbarous about you. I think there ought to be a law against naming a girl till she's old enough to choose for herself. Well, as I told you, I was christened Azalea, but everybody saw from the first it didn't fit. 'She's a regular little gipsy!' Dad said; so they called me Gipsy, and Gipsy I mean to be. I made Dad tell Miss Poppleton so, and enter me Gipsy on the school books. I wasn't going to start in a new place as Azalea." "So you've been to school before?" said Dilys Fenton. "Rather! I told you I've been to seven schools--three in America, two in New Zealand, one in Australia, and one in South Africa. This is the first English school I've tried." "Seven--and you're only fourteen! Why, you must have been to a fresh one every year!" Gipsy nodded. "You're just about right there. Never stayed more than two terms at any of them. No--they didn't expel me! I tell you, I'm an absolute miracle of good behaviour when I like. It was simply because Dad and I were always moving on, and whenever he went to a fresh place I had to go to a fresh school. You don't think I'd let him leave me in America when he was going to Australia, do you?" "Haven't you got a mother?" asked Barbara Kendrick. "Shut up, you stupid!" murmured Dilys Fenton, giving Barbara a nudge. Gipsy rolled her handkerchief into a tight ball, and unrolled it again before she replied.