"And this girl is coming to St. Etheldreda's," said Irene slowly. "Surely Miss Julian doesn't know what sort of a character she has?"
"But she does!" Glenda retorted triumphantly. "She offered to take the girl into her school—give her a trial, so to speak. It seems her mother was a very dear old friend of Prinny's and she's doing it for her sake, I suppose."
The girls looked at one another, but no one said anything.
"What I think," continued Glenda, "is that it's rather hard lines on us to have a girl of this sort foisted on us. If she's too bad a character for one school to put up with, then she isn't good enough for St. Etheldreda's."
"Hear, hear!" came from one or two listeners.
"Well," said red-haired Irene, the top girl of the form, "we aren't all saints by any means, but I've never yet heard of a girl at St. Etheldreda's who has had to be threatened with expulsion. I don't want to chum up with a girl of that sort."
Glenda held up her letter. "My cousin says it's a good thing for me I am warned in time, as she knows how lacking I am in common sense and a 'sense of balance,' whatever that means. Rather a knock for me, what?" and she joined heartily in the laugh against herself.
"Still, perhaps it is rather fortunate we have got to know about this girl," Muriel Graves observed thoughtfully. "Otherwise we might have had a few shocks."
"Forewarned is forearmed," added Irene. "We shall know how to deal with her—or rather, how to steer clear of her," and there was a murmur of agreement from the others; the rest of the form were apt to be easily swayed by its two strongest characters, Irene and Glenda.
Suddenly a new voice, hitherto unheard, came from the direction of the wide hearth.