about the room, and tore his hair, and shouted like he does with Janie.
He scared me quite enough sitting by my side and saying: 'Shall we take
this again now?' with a sort of grim politeness, as if he were making an
effort to restrain his temper. I know I'm not what he calls musical, but
I can't help it. I'd rather hear comic opera any day than his wretched
cantatas, and when I'm not practising I shall play what I like. There!"

And Fil, who was sitting at the piano, twirled round on the stool and
strummed "Beautiful K--K--Katie" with a lack of technique that probably
would have brought her teacher's temper up to bubbling-over point had he
been there to listen to her.

It was exactly ten days after the term had begun that Bess Haselford
came to the College. She walked into the Upper Fifth Form room one
Monday morning, looking very shy and lost and strange, and stood
forlornly, not knowing where to sit, till somebody took pity on her, and
pointed to a vacant desk. It happened to be on a line with Ingred's, and
the latter watched her settle herself. She looked her over with the
critical air that is generally bestowed on new girls, and decided that
she was particularly pretty. Bess was the image of one of the Sir Joshua
Reynolds' child angels in the National Gallery. The likeness was so
great that her mother had always cut and curled her golden-brown hair in
exact copy of the picture. She was a slim, rosy, bright-eyed, smiling
specimen of girlhood, and, though on this first morning she was
manifestly afflicted with shyness, she had the appearance of one whose
acquaintance might be worth making. Ingred decided to cultivate it at
the earliest opportunity, and spoke to the new arrival at lunch-time.
Bess replied readily to the usual questions.

"We've only come lately to Grovebury. We used to live at Birkshaw. Yes,