The school had been open now for some time, and the full number of seventy was made up. Leucha was now so infatuated with Hollyhock that she no longer regretted her being the queen of the school. Hollyhock, for her part, held serious conversations with her sisters about the girl whom she had so strangely conquered.
'We must make a woman of her,' said Hollyhock. 'She is naught in life but a cringing kitchen cat at present, but it is our bounden duty to turn her into something better. How shall we set to work, lassies?'
The Flower Girls considered. Jasmine inquired anxiously if Leucha was clever in any particular branch.
'No,' said Hollyhock; 'she could not even make a ghostie.'
'Well, can we not pretend that she is clever?' said Gentian.
'That's a good notion,' exclaimed Hollyhock. 'I have heard whispers that there are big prizes to be given in the school by the Duke to the girls that are best in different subjects. We don't want prizes, not we; but that little Leuchy, she 'd be up to her eyes with joy if we were to set her trying for a prize. I 'm thinking that Mrs Macintyre will declare the nature of the prizes very soon. After prayers to-morrow I 'll set Leuchy on to try for one. I 'll help her, if I can, privately. She has got what I have not, and that's ambition. I can work on that; and, lassies, it will be a great relief to me, for I hate—I hate being purred on and kissed all day long. I must put up with it; but it's trying, seeing my own nature is contrariwise to that.'
The five girls talked a while of the coming prizes.
Leucha was now under the charge of Jasper, and they got on tolerably well, for Jasper would do anything in the world for Hollyhock, and as Hollyhock was the only love of Leucha's life, she talked on no other subject whatsoever to the lad.
'Well,' he exclaimed, 'you surely don't tell me that you kiss her—kiss Holly!—and she so prickly with thorns?'
'Indeed, I do, Jasper. She loves my kisses; she would not take them from any one else.'