On Monday morning Patty started for her second week at the Oliphant school without any misgivings as to her reception by the girls.

Although little had been said regarding Lorraine, and though Patty had loyally refrained from disclaiming her as an intimate friend, yet Clementine and Adelaide both understood matters better now, and were quite ready to accept Patty on her own merits.

So it came about that she walked to school between Adelaide and Lorraine, and though her two companions had little to say to each other, Patty skilfully managed to be pleasant and sociable with both.

Of course the morning was entirely occupied with lessons, but at the noon hour Adelaide appropriated Patty and carried her off to join a group off girls who were merrily chatting together. Clementine was one of them, and in a few moments Patty discovered that they were all Gigs, and seemed proud of the appellation.

“It will be the most fun,” Flossy Fisher was saying; “I’ll manage the Elephant—I can always wind her around my finger—and she won’t know what it’s all about until she finds herself down cellar in front of the mirror. You’ll come to it, won’t you, Patty?”

“What is it, and where, and when, and how, and why?” asked Patty, laughing; “you see I’m a new girl, and a green one. But I suppose from your mention of the elephant, you’re talking about a circus.”

“It will be a circus,” said Clementine, “but a little private one of our own. The Elephant is our pet name for Miss Oliphant, and we Gigs are always playing tricks on her. She pretends she doesn’t like it, but I think she does, for often behind her frowning spectacles she hides a smiling face.”

“Isn’t Clementine the cleverest thing!” exclaimed Adelaide; “she can misquote from all the standard British and American authors. It’s a great thing to be the bright and shining light of the Literature class.”

“But tell me more about this elephant performance,” said Patty; “why are you going to put Miss Oliphant down cellar?”

“Sh! breathe it not aloud,” warned Clementine; “the Wild West must not hear it. It isn’t until Hallowe’en, you know, and then——”

The announcement of luncheon interrupted this conversation, and the girls started for the dining-room. Adelaide insisted that Patty should sit at their table, but for two reasons Patty hesitated about this.

In the first place she did not quite want to desert Lorraine so completely; and second, she was not yet sure that she wanted to proclaim herself one of the Gigs. Still less did she want to be a Prig, and she well knew she could never by the widest stretch of imagination be called a Dig, so she concluded not to ally herself definitely with either of these mystic orders until she had opportunity for further consideration.

So she firmly but good-naturedly declined to change her table for the present, and took her usual place by the side of Lorraine.

“Well,” said Lorraine, pettishly, “you seem to have made a great many new friends.”

“Yes,” said Patty, determined to be pleasant, “I have. I’m getting better acquainted with the girls, and I think they’re a very nice lot. You can’t judge much the first few days, you know. Clementine is a dear, isn’t she?”

“I don’t see anything dear about her. I think she’s silly and stuck-up.”

“Why, Lorraine, how absurd! Clementine isn’t stuck-up at all.”

“Well, I think she is, and, anyway, I don’t like her.” After which gracious speech Lorraine devoted herself to eating her luncheon, and was so unresponsive to further attempts at conversation that Patty gave it up, and turned to talk to the girl on the other side of her.

This was Hilda Henderson, an English girl, who had lived in America only about two years. She was slender, yet with a suggestion of hardy strength in her small bones and active muscles. She had a quick nervous manner, and her head, which was daintily set on her shoulders, moved with the alert motions of a bird. Not exactly pretty, but with dark straight hair and dark eyes, she looked like a girl of fine traits and strong character.

Patty had liked the appearance of this girl from the first, but had not seemed to be able to make friends with her.

But fortified by the new conditions which were developing, she made overtures with a little more confidence.

“You are a boarding pupil here, aren’t you?” said Patty. “Do you know anything about the plans for a Hallowe’en party?”

“No,” said Hilda, “except that there’s going to be one. I fancy it will be just like last year’s party.”

“Are they nice? What do you do at them?”

“Yes, they’re rather good fun. We bob for apples, and go downstairs backward, and sail nut-shell boats, and all those things.”

Patty said nothing further about Miss Oliphant’s part in it, as she thought perhaps it was a secret.

“You must have real good times living here,” she went on; “so many of you girls all together.”

“Yes, it’s not so very horrid; though it’s very unlike an English boarding school. American girls are so enthusiastic.”

“Yes, we are; but I like that, don’t you?”

“Oh, if one has anything to be excited over, it’s all very well; but you waste such a lot of enthusiasm that, when anything comes along really worth while, you have no words left to show your appreciation of it.”

“Oh, I have,” said Patty, laughing. “Or if I haven’t, I use the same words over again. They don’t wear out, you know.”

“Yes, they do,” said Hilda, earnestly; “you say everything is perfectly grand or gorgeous when it’s most commonplace. And then when you come across something really grand or gorgeous what can you say?”

“Of course that’s all true; but that’s just a way we have. You like America, don’t you?”

“Yes, rather well. But I never shall learn to rave over nothing the way you all do.”

“How do you know I do? You scarcely know me at all yet.”

“You’re not as much so as the rest. And I think I shall like you. But I don’t make friends easily, and often I don’t get on with the very ones I most want to.”

“Oh, you’ll get on with me all right if you have the least mite of a wish to. I make friends awfully easily. That is, I generally have,” supplemented Patty, suddenly remembering her experiences of the past week.

“I think I’d like to be friend............