Before Laura had finished arranging her belongings on the shelves that were assigned to her, some of the older girls began to drop in from the study. One unceremoniously turned over her books, which were lying on the table.
"Let's see what the kid's got."
Now Laura was proud of her collection: it really made a great show; for a daughter of Godmother's had once attended the College, and her equipment had been handed down to Laura.
"Why, you don't mean to say a kid like you's in the Second Principia already?" said a big girl, and held up, incredulously, Smith's black and red boards. "Wherever did YOU learn Latin?"
In the reediest of voices Laura was forced to confess that she had never learnt Latin at all.
The girl eyed her in dubious amaze, then burst out laughing. "Oh, I say!" she called to a friend. "Here's a rum go. Here's this kid brings the Second Principia with her and doesn't know the First."
Several others crowded round; and all found this divergence from the norm, from the traditional method of purchasing each book new and as it was needed, highly ridiculous. Laura, on her knees before her shelf, pretended to be busy; but she could not see what she was doing, for the mist that gathered in her eyes.
Just at this moment, however, in marched Maria Morell. "Here, I say, stop that!" she cried. "You're teasing that kid again. I won't have it. Here, come on, Kid—Laura Tweedledum come and sit by me for supper."
For the second time, Laura was thankful to the fat girl. But as ill-luck would have it, Miss Chapman chanced to let her eyes stray in their direction; and having fingered her chain indecisively for a little, said: "It seems a pity, doesn't it, Miss Day, that that nice little girl should get in with that vulgar set?"
Miss Chapman liked to have her opinions confirmed. But this was a weakness Miss Day did not pamper; herself strong-minded, she could afford to disregard Miss Chapman's foibles. So she went on with her book, and ignored the question. But Miss Zielinski, who lost no opportunity of making herself agreeable to those over her, said with foreign emphasis: "Yes, indeed it does."