“Really, Kathleen, you are a most extraordinary girl.”

“Of course I am,” said Kathleen.  “Did you ever suppose that I was anything else?  I am very remarkable, and I am very naughty.  I always was, and I always will be.  I am up to no end of mischief.  I wish you could have seen me and Rory together at home.  Oh, what didn’t we do?  Do you know that once we walked across a little bridge of metal which is put between two of the stables?  It is just a narrow iron rod, six feet in length.  If we had either of us fallen we’d have been dashed to pieces on the cobble-stones forty feet below.  Mother saw me when I was half-way across, and she gave a shriek.  It nearly finished me, but I steadied myself and got across.  Oh, it was jolly!  I am going to set some of the foundation girls at that sort of thing.  I expect I shall have great fun with them.  It is principally because my affinity won’t have anything to do with me; she is attaching herself to another, and that other is little better than a monster.  Your Alice won’t like me; and, to be frank with you, I don’t like her.  I like you, because you are poor and worried and seem old for your age—­although your age is a great one—­and because you have to cobble those horrid socks.  There! good-bye for the present.  Don’t hate me too much; I can’t help the way I am made.  Oh; I hear Alice.  What a detestable voice she has!  Now then, I’m off.”

Kathleen ran up to her room, and again she locked the door.  She heard Alice’s step, and she felt a certain vindictiveness as she turned the key in the lock.  Alice presently took the handle of the door and shook it.

“Let me in at once, Kathleen,” she said.  “I really can’t put up with this sort of thing any longer.  I want to get into my room; I want to tidy myself.  I am going to supper to-night with Cassandra Weldon.”

“Then you don’t get in,” whispered Kathleen to herself.  Aloud she said: 

“I am sorry, darling, but I am specially busy, and I really must have my share of the room to myself.”

“Do open the door, Kathleen,” now almost pleaded poor Alice.  “If you want your share of the room, I want mine.  Don’t you understand?”

“I am not interfering, dearest,” called back Kathleen, “and I am keeping religiously to my own half.  I have the straight window, and you have the bay.  I am not touching your beautiful half; I am only in mine.”

“Let me in,” called Alice again, “and don’t be silly.”

“Sorry, dear; don’t think I am silly.”

There was a silence.  Alice went on her knees and peered through the keyhole:  Kathleen was seated by her dressing-table, and there was a sound of the furious scratching of a pen quite audible.  “This is intolerable,” thought Alice.  “She is the most awful girl I ever heard of.  I shall be late.  Mary Addersley and Rhoda Pierpont are to call for me shortly, and I shan’t be ready.  I don’t want to appeal to mother or to be rude to the poor wild thing the first day.  Stay, I will tempt her.—­Kathleen!”