"Then you must give a course yourself to the whole school, my dear Miss Austen," she exclaimed. "I insist upon it; and we will begin the first Wednesday of next term." Anything that promised an addition to her salary was sure to be agreeable to Katharine, and she was only too pleased to agree. But, meanwhile, her finances were in a deplorable condition. She found herself with nothing but the change out of half a sovereign, about ten days before the end of the term; and although she could easily have asked Miss Jennings to give her credit until she received her salary, she had all a woman's hyper-sensitiveness of conscience, and all her disregard of the importance of food as well; and she resolutely set to work to starve herself during those ten days. Fortunately, she was constitutionally strong, and she never reached the stage of privation when food becomes distasteful; but there was little consolation for her in the fact that she remained healthily hungry all the time, and had to run past the pastry-cooks' shops to escape their seductive display. Long walks at supper time did not compensate for a meal that was satisfying, if it was not very tempting; and the irony of it all was forced upon her with a somewhat grim significance by something that occurred, when she came up to bed one evening, tired out and dispirited. She noticed that the girls stopped talking directly she entered the room; but this would not have aroused her suspicions, if Phyllis Hyam had not made a point of conversing vigorously with her through the curtains, and being more brusque than usual when the others tried to interrupt her. "Good old Phyllis," reflected Katharine. "They have evidently been abusing me. I wonder what I have done!" Phyllis enlightened her somewhat unwillingly, the next morning, when the others had gone down to breakfast. "Don't bother about them; _I_ wouldn't. Mean cats! It's jealousy, of course. Fact is, Polly saw you in a hansom with a man, some time back; she came home full of it. Said you were no better than the rest of us, after all. I said you never pretended to be; it was our own look out, if we chose to think so. Besides, it was most likely your brother, I said. Polly said it wasn't; you looked so happy, and he was smiling at you." "Conclusive evidence," murmured Katharine, with her mouth full of hair-pins. "Did she describe the gentleman in question? It might be useful for future identification." "Oh, yes, she did! Said he was rather like a corpse with a black beard; had a flavour of dead loves about him, I think she said; but I don't quite know what she was driving at. And I'm sure I don't care." "I do. It is most entertaining. Was that all they said?" Phyllis hesitated, said she was not going to tell any more, and finally told every detail. "I said they were mean, despicable liars, especially Polly, considering how much you have done for her! And I said that if ever I had the chance--"