Rhoda looked at the pictures in her magazines, or pretended to look, for her brain was so much occupied with other matters that she could not grasp their meaning, and after five minutes' inspection would hardly have been able to say whether she had been studying the features of a country landscape or those of a society beauty. Then she turned and cautiously examined her neighbours. The girl to the right was a square, stolid-looking creature, square-faced, square-shouldered, with square toes to her boots, and elbows thrust out on each side in square, aggressive fashion. Her eyes were small and light, and her nose a defiance of classic traditions; the corners of her mouth turned down, and she had at once the solemnest and the most mischievous expression it is possible to imagine. After a critical survey of her charms, Rhoda felt that she was not the person with whom to force a conversation, and turned her attention to the neighbour on her left. A recruit, surely; for, though her hat-band was in order, there was in her mien an absence of that brisk, independent air which seemed to characterise the old Hurst girl. A pretty damsel, too, with curling hair and soft dark eyes, which at the present moment were bent in elaborate scrutiny on the paper before her. Rhoda noticed that it was the advertisement page at which she was looking, and suspected a pre- occupation kindred to her own. She coughed slightly and ventured a gentle question-- "Is this your first term at school?" The dark-eyed girl turned a fleeting glance upon her, so fleeting that it seemed as if she had never altered her position, and replied monosyllabically: "Yes." "You are going up, like me, for the first time?" "Yes." "And you have never been to school before?" "Yes." "I mean a boarding school. A big school like this, on all the new lines?" "Yes." This was disconcerting! What _did_ she mean? It was her first term, she was a new girl, and yet she had been up before! What was the girl thinking about! She might really trouble herself to say more than one single word. "But you said--I understood you to say--" Brown Eyes turned fiercely upon her, and fairly snapped in indignation. "I don't care what I said, or what you understood. Can't you _see_ I want to be quiet? Can't you leave me alone? If I am a new girl, I don't want to howl before all the others, do I! Very well, then! don't make me talk! Read your book, and let me read mine."