At that moment there came a knock at Rosamund's door. Rosamund flew to open it. Laura Everett stood without.
"So you have come back, Rosamund! How glad I am to see you! May I come in?"
"If you don't mind, not for a few minutes," said Rosamund. "May I have a chat with you after supper, or one day after lessons?"
"Of course to-night. We can walk about in the corridors if it is too cold to go out-of-doors. But is it absolutely true—I only heard it as a whisper—that you have brought Irene Ashleigh, the terror of the neighborhood, here?"
"She will be a terror no longer if you will all be kind to her," said Rosamund. "I have a great deal to say to you; but don't keep me now. She has come, and so has dear little Agnes Frost, and—oh! do ask the other girls to be kind, and not to take any special notice. You will, won't you?"
"I'm sure I'd do anything for you," said Laura. "I think you were splendid all through. I cannot tell you how I have admired you, and how I spoke to mother about you in the holidays; and mother said that though you had not done exactly right, yet you were the finest girl she had ever heard of or come across, and she was very glad to think that you and I might be in a sort of way friends."
"Well, let us be real friends," said Rosamund affectionately. "Now, don't keep me any longer. I have as much as I can do to get my couple ready to make a respectable appearance at supper."
Laura ran off to inform her school-fellows that the noted, the terrible Irene was in very truth a pupil at Mrs. Merriman's school. The girls, of course, had heard that Irene was coming, and that Rosamund had been forgiven, and, notwithstanding her disobedience, was returning to the school. But although they believed the latter part of this intelligence, they doubted the former, thinking it quite impossible that any sane people would admit such a character as Irene into their midst. But when Laura came downstairs and told her news, the girls looked up with more or less interest in their faces.
Annie Millar, who was Laura's special friend, said that she was glad.
"She needn't suppose that I'll be afraid of her," said Annie.