The little group collected round the fire moved slightly so as to make room for us, and a pretty fair-faced girl, with a mop of frizzy pale-gold hair, came forward.
"Come along," she said brightly, "and I'll tell you who we all are. I'm Doris Forbes, and this is my sister Janet, and these are Ellinor Graham, Millicent Holmes, Blanche Greenwood, and Olave and Beatrice Milner," pointing to each as she spoke. "Most of the others are still upstairs unpacking their boxes, and a few of us haven't arrived yet. Now as you're new girls, we want to know all about you. To begin with, which is Lucy, and which is Philippa? Are you sisters, and have you ever been to school before?"
"I'm Philippa," I replied, "and this is my cousin Lucy. We've never been to school before; we had a governess at home."
"All the better for you," put in the tall girl in the blue dress whom the others called Millicent Holmes. "Mrs. Marshall never likes girls who come from other schools. She says she has to teach them everything all over again."
"That's just to make you think her ways are better than anyone else's," said Ellinor Graham. "I've had five music masters, and every one has put me back to the beginning, and told me the others didn't know how to teach."
"Then you'll get put back again this term," laughed Blanche Greenwood. "For Herr Goldschmidt has gone home to Germany, and we're to have an Italian, named Signor Salviati, instead."
"No!" cried the girls with thrilling interest. "Have you seen him? What's he like?"
"Oh, don't excite yourselves! He's not a romantic-looking Italian, with long curls and a twisted moustache; he's a nasty little fat oily kind of a man, with a pointed beard, who looks as if he could be horribly cross if you played wrong notes."
"How disgusting!" cried the others. "Are there any other changes?"
"Miss Buller is to have the fourth class," said Blanche, who seemed to be the general fund of information. "Janet, Beatrice, and Olave are on the early-morning practising list for this month" (groans from Janet, Beatrice, and Olave at the bad news), "the Simpsons have the bedroom at the end of the passage, with the balcony, and Miss Percy is to take the sewing this term."