blouse, more or less complete, was invariably pinned, waiting for the moment when Mollie had time to devote to her favourite occupation. There were no book-shelves, but a litter of magazines behind a cushion on the window-seat, and innumerable photographs were secured to the wall by black-headed pins, to fade slowly but surely into unrecognition in the unbroken glare of light.

Mollie herself pined for curtains to mitigate the draught during the winter months, but the three other inmates of Attica loudly declared that they could not spare a fraction of light, so she gave way smiling, as her custom was. Mollie never grumbled; it was so dull, as she said, and she loved to be gay. An invincible cheeriness of heart carried her gallantly over the quicksands in which Ruth was submerged by reason of her moodiness, and Trix by her quick temper, and made it a physical impossibility to repine over the inevitable.

Fifteen-year-old Trix was in that stage when the Oxford examination seems the end-all and be-all of existence. Her section of Attica was proudly dubbed “The Study,” and had its walls covered with maps, class lists, and “memos” of great variety. The desk was strewn with papers and exercise-books, and there lingered in the air that indescribable scent of sponge, slate, indiarubber, and freshly sharpened pencils which seem inseparable from youthful study.

Trix confessed to one weakness,—only one!—an overwhelming greed for pencil-boxes and sharpeners, and the contents of the wooden shelf above the desk testified to her indulgence in this craving. “The girls gave them to me!” she used to say when strangers exclaimed at the number of the piled-up boxes, but she blushed even as she spoke, knowing well that to keep sixpence in her pocket and pass a pencil-box of a new design, was a feat of self-denial beyond imagination.

Dear, chubby, placid Betty was only thirteen, and cared for nothing in the world but her relations, chocolate-creams, and scrambling through the day’s classes with as little exertion as possible. She shivered in her corner, poor mite, sucking audibly, to the distraction of her elders, the while she skimmed over her lessons, and looked forward to the time when she would be free to devote herself to the hobby of the hour.

Sometimes it was postcards; sometimes it was stamps; sometimes it was penny toys collected from street vendors. It had once soared as high as autographs, and a promising beginning of three signatures were already pasted into the remaining leaves of an exercise-book. Whatever the 

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