In the meantime nothing escaped her sharp eyes or ears.

All that Kitty or Betty could tell her about the school, or Miss Richards, or the girls, especially the Kitsons, she drank in and stored up in her memory, and they would have been astonished beyond measure could they have known how much her hasty wandering glances told her, resting, as they did, apparently on nothing.
Before the first morning was over she knew that Helen Rawson was admired but feared; that Joyce Pearse was the most popular girl in the school, and had taken a dislike to herself, but liked Kitty and Betty; that Netta Anderson was Miss Richards's favourite pupil, and that she herself did not like Netta; and that Lettice Kitson was not very wise and not very honourable, and that Maude was the same, but was the more clever of the two.
To Betty the morning had been interesting, though alarming at times; to Kitty it was all dreadful, and she went through it weighed down by a gloomy despair at the thought that this was to go on day after day, perhaps for years.
The most terrifying experience of all to her was the examination she had to undergo to determine her position in the school.

Anna was used to it, so bore it better, and to Betty it was not so appalling, but to Kitty it was the most awful ordeal she had ever experienced.
"Having teeth out is nothing to it," she said afterwards, and her relief when it was over was so intense that she thought nothing about the result, and was not at all concerned about the position assigned her, until Anna came up to her brimming over with condolences, and apologies, and scarcely concealed delight.
"O Katherine, I _am_ so sorry, but it _really_ wasn't my fault.
I didn't know I was doing so well, and--and that they would put me in the same class as you! Of course I thought you would be ever so much higher than me--being so much older." Kitty had scarcely realized the fact before, certainly she had not been shamed by it, but Anna's remarks and apologies roused her to a sudden sense of mortification, and Anna's manner annoyed her greatly.
"Did you, really ?" she said doubtingly.

"Well," proudly, "don't worry about it any more.

If you don't mind, I don't," and she walked away with her head in the air.