"Thank you, Beatrice; no need to get excited; I can fight my own battles without your help. This little difference is between Rhoda and me, and we must settle it together. I think we could talk matters over more comfortably in my study, without interrupting your rest hour. May I trouble you, Miss Chester? Three doors along the passage. I won't take you far out of your way!" Thomasina rose from her seat, and waved her hand towards the door. She was all smiles and blandness, but a gasp of dismay sounded through the room, as if a private interview in the Head Girl's study was no light thing to contemplate. Rhoda's heart beat fast with apprehension. What was going to happen. What would take place next? It was like the invitation of the spider to the fly--full of subtle terror. Nevertheless, her pride would not allow her to object, and, throwing back her head, she marched promptly, and without hesitation, along the corridor. CHAPTER NINE. HAVING IT OUT. Thomasina led the way into her study, and shut the door behind her. It was a bare little room, singularly free from those photographs and nick- nacks with which most girls love to adorn a private sanctum. It looked what it was--a workroom pure and simple, with a pile of writing materials on the table, and the walls ornamented with maps and sheets of paper, containing jottings of the hours of classes and games. On the mantelpiece reposed a ball of string, a dogskin glove, a matchbox, and a photograph of an elderly gentleman, whose pike-like aspect sufficiently proclaimed his relationship. There were three straight-back chairs, supplied by the school, and two easier ones of Thomasina's own providing, both in the last stages of invalidism. The mistress of this luxurious domain turned towards her visitor with a hospitable smile. "Sit down," she cried, "make yourself comfortable. Not that chair--the spokes have given way, and it might land you on the floor. Try the blue, and keep your skirts to the front, so that it won't catch on the nails. I can't think how it is that my chairs go wrong. I'm always tinkering at them. Nice little study, isn't it? So cosy!" "Ye-es!" assented Rhoda, who privately thought it the most forlorn- looking apartment she had ever seen, but was in no mood to discuss either its merits or demerits. It was in no friendly spirit that she had paid this visit; then why waste time on foolish preliminaries? She looked expectantly at Thomasina, and Thomasina stood in front of the chimney-piece with both hands thrust into the side pockets of her bicycling skirt, jingling their contents in an easy, gentlemanly fashion. From her leathern band depended a steel chain which lost itself in the depths of the right-hand pocket. Rhoda felt an unaccountable curiosity to discover what hung at the end of that chain and rattled in so uncanny a fashion.