Kathleen smiled back at her.  Her face was rosy.  Her hair was tossed in wild confusion about her head and shoulders; it tumbled also over her forehead, and made her eyes look more dancing and mischievous than ever beneath its heavy shadow.

“I wonder—­” said Kathleen softly.

If she had spoken in a loud voice Alice would have taken no notice, but there was something pathetic and beautiful in her tone, and Alice raised herself and looked at her.

“I wonder,” she said “why you hate me so much?’

“Fudge!” said Alice.

“But Alice, it isn’t fudge.  Why should I have made myself so terribly obnoxious to you?  The others are fond of me; they don’t think me perfect—­and indeed I don’t want them to—­but they love me for those qualities in me which are worthy of love.”

“How you chatter!” said Alice.  “I have hitherto failed to perceive the qualities in you that are worthy of love.  It wants another quarter of an hour before our hot water is brought in.  Do you greatly object to my sleeping during that time?”

“No, cross patch,” said Kathleen, turning angrily on her pillow.  “You may sleep till doomsday as far as I am concerned.”

“Polite,” muttered Alice.

She shut her eyes, folded her arms, and prepared for further slumber; but somehow Kathleen had effectually aroused her.  She could not get the radiant face out of her head, nor the words, a little sad in their meaning, out of her ears.  She looked up as though moved to say something.

“As you have asked me a question, I will give you an answer.  I know a way in which you can secure my good opinion.”

“Really!” said Kathleen, who was too angry now to be properly polite.  “And what may that way be?”

“Why, this:  if you will tell the truth about your horrible society, and spare dear little Ruth Craven, and make Cassandra Weldon happy.”

“I don’t care twopence about your tiresome Cassandra; but little Ruth—­what ails her?”

“The governors are going to insist upon her telling what she knows.”

“But she won’t,” said Kathleen, laughing merrily.  “She is too much of a brick.”

“Then she’ll be expelled.”

“What nonsense!”

“You wait and see.  You don’t know the Great Shirley School as well as I do.  However, I have spoken; I have nothing more to say.  It is time to get up, after all.”

The girls dressed in silence.  Alice had long ceased to torment Kathleen about her own side of the room.  Provided Alice’s side was left in peace, she determined to shut her eyes to untidy wardrobes, to the chest of drawers full to bursting, to a boot kicked off here and a shoe disporting itself there, to ribbons and laces and handkerchiefs and scarves and blouses scattered on the bed, and even on the floor.  Alice had learnt to put up with these things; she turned her back on them, so to speak.