"I didn't see Netta," she thought, and then turned, for she heard Netta's indignant, protesting voice in the passage outside in loud altercation with Miss Trent. "It's no use, Netta, I can't allow it," the mistress was saying. "With that sniffly cold in your head it would be folly to bathe, and as you say your mother is away from home, and you could not ask her permission this morning, I must be the judge, and I say most emphatically no." "But, Miss Trent! If I just--" "Not another word, Netta! Go into your own Form room at once, and do some preparation. Do you want me to report you to Miss Roscoe? Then go, this instant!" A very sulky, angry, rebellious, disconsolate Netta flung herself through the doorway and flounced to her desk. She gave one stare at Gwen, and, frowning, began to get out her books. "We're companions in misfortune!" ventured Gwen, but Netta took not the very slightest notice. "Oh, very well, madam; if you're going to cut me I'll cut you!" thought Gwen, and she turned to the window again. There was no mistress in the room, and Gwen knew that for the next hour she could practically do as she liked. She would begin her preparation soon and finish some of it before she went home, but there was no particular hurry. The window commanded a view of a side street and just a peep into the main street, and it amused her at present to stand watching the passers-by. They were not remarkably enthralling--an old gentleman in a Bath chair, a nursemaid wheeling two babies in a perambulator, a baker's boy, a young woman with a large parcel, a vendor of boot laces, and a man delivering circulars. Gwen looked at them with languid attention, drumming her fingers idly on the window sill; then quite suddenly an expression of keen interest flashed across her face and she leaned out over the protecting iron bars. "Dick!" she called loudly and impulsively, "Dick!" The boy on the pavement below stopped and gazed up. "Hello! Why, Gwen, by all that's wonderful!" "What are you doing in Stedburgh, Dick?" "Come in to have my hair cut, Miss Inquisitive, if you must know!" "Oh, what a shame! I like it curly best. Have you had it done?" "The fatal operation has been performed," said Dick, uncovering his closely-cropped head for a moment. "And what are you going to do now?" "Go home again." "I wish I could," sighed Gwen. "Are you supposed to be in school?" queried Dick. "Of course I am, silly! I'm in my own Form room." "Must be a queer sort of school, then, if they let you talk at the window." "They don't as a rule. But the others have all gone to the baths to-day and I'm left here to do prep." "Hard luck!" "Just what I've been saying to myself. It's simply sickening. You know what it feels like to be out of things." "Don't I, rather!" [Illustration: "OH, I SAY, WELL CAUGHT!"] "I feel like a captive in a tower or a nun in a convent," continued Gwen plaintively.