"A great deal when it means two extra beds in a dormitory."
"It means two extra seats in a room that's already overcrowded," declared Opal loftily. "If the school is going to take any more new girls it had better build an annexe and let them have classes there."
"Sorry to be on the earth!" said Merle sarcastically. "Perhaps you'd like us to sit inside the cupboard? We shouldn't crowd you out there."
Opal looked her up and down, from her velvet hair-band to the tips of her shoes, then she gave a kind of snort.
"I suppose you think yourself ever so clever," she retorted. "Girls from big schools generally give themselves airs."
"Other people can give themselves airs," snapped Merle, warming to the battle. "Big schools teach manners at any rate!"
"Oh, we don't mean anything against this school," hurriedly put in Mavis, who generally tried to take the edge off her sister's cutting speeches. "We think it's going to be quite jolly. I'm sorry if we've taken the desks where you've had your museum, but where are we to keep our books and things?"
Opal, who was grudgingly removing the contents of two desks, which for a whole term had been devoted to a collection of natural history objects, had the grace to look rather ashamed of herself.
"Oh, it's all right," she temporized, "but what I'm to do with all our birds' eggs and butterflies goodness only knows! I daren't keep them in any of the other classrooms or those juniors would be fingering them and they'd be smashed to bits. I suppose I must pack them in boxes and get Miss Fanny to stow them away somewhere."
"Can't I help?" said Mavis, coming to the rescue.