CHAPTER I.
Prologue .-- Miss Quincey Stops the Way "Stand back, Miss Quincey, if you please." The school was filing out along the main corridor of St.Sidwell's.

It came with a tramp and a rustle and a hiss and a tramp, urged to a trot by the excited teachers.

The First Division first, half-woman, carrying itself smoothly, with a swish of its long skirts, with a blush, a dreamy intellectual smile, or a steadfast impenetrable air, as it happened to be more or less conscious of the presence of the Head.

Then the Second Division, light-hearted, irrepressible, making a noise with its feet, loose hair flapping, pig-tails flopping to the beat of its march.

Then the straggling, diminishing lines of the Third, a froth of white pinafores, a confusion of legs, black or tan, staggering, shifting, shuffling in a frantic effort to keep time.
On it came in a waving stream; a stream that flickered with innumerable eyes, a stream that rippled with the wind of its own flowing, that flushed and paled and brightened as some flower-face was tossed upwards, or some crest, flame-coloured or golden, flung back the light.