Peggy's pillow was quite damp when she went to sleep that night. To be sure she had been cheered by a friendly call from Bertha Haughton, but even that could not keep the homesickness from triumphing, when she was left alone, and the sounds in the corridor died away, and the light was out. Home seemed so far, so endlessly far away; she felt so utterly alone in the world! Education seemed a foolish and meaningless thing beside the love and comfort of home. What would she not give to be able to put out her hand and feel her sister Jean beside her, warm and loving, her own flesh and blood!

So the pillow was damp, as I have said; but Peggy was young and healthy, and she fell asleep after awhile, and when she woke again the sun was up and the pillow was dry. Now she did put out her hand for Jean, forgetting where she was; and finding nothing but a cold wall, lay looking around her, coming back to the present. The room looked very strange at first. "Maybe I'm not awake!" said Peggy, wisely; then she pinched herself, and with the pinch the whole thing came back.

"Why, of course!" she said. "Oh, dear! well, here I am; and I wanted to come, and I've been thinking about it for months, and then it goes and is like this!" She sighed, and wondered what they were doing at home, and at Fernley; then she became interested in her pretty room, and her heart overflowed once more with love to her dear ones at Fernley, who had made it so bright and charming for her. "I know what Margaret would say!" exclaimed Peggy, raising her head from the pillow. "She would say, 'Now you are there, my dear, try to make the best of it;' and so I will! You hear me!" These last words were spoken aloud with some severity, and appeared to be addressed to the brush and comb, which took no notice whatever. And then Peggy made the best of that moment, and got up.

Breakfast was another ordeal, but not so bad as the tea of the night before; after breakfast came prayers, and then the class-room. Peggy found herself seated at a desk, beside one of her classmates, Rose Barclay, a pretty brunette, with rosy cheeks and bright dark eyes. In the brief pause before study-time, the two girls made acquaintance, and Peggy learned that theirs was the largest freshman class the school had ever had. All the others were in the west wing, where the freshmen belonged.

"You came late," said Rose Barclay, "and that's why you are over among the Jews and Seas. That's what they call the juniors and seniors; I've learned so much already!" she said, laughing. "They seem to have nicknames for everything and everybody in this place."

"Yes!" said Peggy. "Even the rooms are named!" and she told of Vanity Fair and the Owls' Nest.

"Corridor A?" asked Rose Barclay. "Oh, they must be Jews. That is Judea, I am pretty sure; and the Senior Corridor is the Mediterranean. It's awfully silly, isn't it? and yet it's funny, too. I suppose we shall get into the swing of it after awhile. You homesick?"

Peggy nodded.

"So'm I! Cry last night?"

Peggy nodded again.

"So did I! but not so much as the girl next door to me. My! she must have cried about all night, I should think. I woke up two or three times, and she was crying every time, and I heard her sniffing in her bath this morning."

"Why didn't you go in and try to cheer her up?" demanded Peggy, rather fiercely.

Rose Barclay stared. "Oh, I couldn't do that! why, I've never spoken to her; it was that queer little piece that sat next to you. Besides, she looks as if she'd die if any one spoke to her."

The school was called to order, and Peggy soon forgot homesickness and everything else in the keen joy of mathematics.

She had chosen the scientific course—there were three courses in the school—in order to get as much of practical and as little of literary knowledge as might be. Geometry was her delight, and it was geometry over which she was bending now.

Most of the teachers at Pentland School expected little of the new pupil from Ohio. The written examinations that Peggy had passed had caused many a head-shaking. The history teacher sighed; the gentle mistress of English literature groaned, and said, "Why must this child come here?" Only Miss Boyle, the mistress of mathematics, had nodded her head over the papers. "Here's a girl who knows what she is about!" she said. Accordingly, when Peggy entered class this morning, she was surprised at the cordial greeting she received from the bright-eyed lady at the central desk; and an indefinable sense of being at home and among friends stole gradually over her, as she wrestled with one delightful problem after another.

Rose Barclay, at her side, was biting her pencil and twisting her pretty forehead into hard knots, and making little progress; but Peggy had forgotten her existence. The period passed like a moment, as theorem after theorem was disposed of.

"Let EDF and BAC be two triangles, having the angle E equal to the angle B, the angle F to the angle C, and the included side EF to the included side BC; then will the triangle EDF be equal to the triangle BAC?"

"Of course it will!" Peggy drew triangles in swift and accurate demonstration. "Put the side EF on its equal BC, and let the point E fall on B, and the point F on C. Then, you see, of course—"

"I don't see how any one is ever to do this!" murmured her neighbour, in despair. "Why! why, you've done yours. Oh, just let me see, won't you? I never can work it out in the world, so do let me copy yours!"

Peggy reddened to the tips of her ears. "Do you—can you—are we allowed to do that?" she stammered.

"Oh! Just as you please!" said Rose Barclay, coldly. "I thought you might be willing to oblige me, that's all. It's of no consequence!"

"Oh! But you don't understand!" whispered Peggy, eagerly; but Rose had turned away, and paid no heed to her; and Miss Boyle tapped with her pencil and said, "Young ladies! No whispering in class, if you please!"

In a few minutes a bell rang, and all the girls sprang up in great relief; geometry was not generally popular, and now came the "gym" hour, dear to all. Peggy turned at once to her neighbour, sure that she would be able to explain everything to the satisfaction of both. To her amazement and distress she met a look so cold and hostile that it seemed to freeze the words on her lips.

"Miss Barclay!" she said, imploringly. "You didn't understand me, indeed you didn't. I should be perfectly delighted to help you, of course I should, only I thought it might be against the rules. Of course, I might have known you would know what is allowed. I'm awfully sorry!"

Rose Barclay hesitated; her face seemed to soften for a moment; then it hardened again, and another change came over it which Peggy did not comprehend.

"I don't know what you mean!" she muttered. "Please excuse me, I am in a hurry." She was gone, and Peggy, turning in great distress, found Miss Boyle standing at her elbow. Had she heard? Peggy was sure she could not have heard, for there was no look of surprise or of anything peculiar in her pleasant face.

"You like geometry, Miss Montfort?"

"Oh, yes, I love geometry! Oh, please, are we allowed to help each other, Miss Boyle?"

"Certainly not!" said Miss Boyle, quietly. "Not upon any account. You can see for yourself that there would be no use in a girl's taking geometry if she cannot do the work herself."

"Yes, I see! I thought so, only—thank you very much. Do you—shall I go now?"

She looked around, and was startled to see that all the other girls had disappeared, and she was alone with the teacher.

Miss Boyle smiled, and her smile was so friendly that it warmed poor Peggy's heart.

"Yes, you may go now," she said; "but I shall hope to see something of you, Miss Montfort. If you will come to my room some evening, I will show you some pretty problems that are not in the text-books."

With this, the highest compliment she could pay a pupil, Miss Boyle went on her way; and Peggy, after wandering through two or three deserted class-rooms, and breaking in upon a senior committee-meeting of a highly private nature, and walking into a pantry, found herself at last in the gymnasium.

This was a lofty and spacious room, fitted with every possible appliance for gymnastic exercises. Peggy's eyes brightened as she gazed about her, at the rope-ladders, the parallel bars, the rings and vaulting-horses and spring-boards. If this were not Paradise, Peggy did not know what was, that was all.

Some of the girls were already arrayed in blouse and full trousers, and were taking their place in ranks, under the eye of an alert, graceful young woman in a pretty dark blue suit. Others were hurrying up from some apartment on a lower floor, and from the stairway came a hum of voices which showed that others were still making ready.

Bertha Haughton, in crimson blouse and black trousers, hurried up to Peggy.

"Here you are!" she cried. "I have been trying to find you. Where are your gym things? Haven't got any? Oh, how too bad!"

"I didn't know!" said poor Peggy. "It didn't say in the programme, did it? Can't I do anything without them? Oh, dear."

Her face, so bright a moment before, clouded so instantly with disappointment and mortification, that the experienced junior could hardly repress a smile.

"My dear! my dear!" she cried. "Do wait till I tell you. You can wear the Snowy's things. She hasn't come back yet, and you can wear them just as well as not till she comes."

"The Snowy?" repeated Peggy. She remembered vaguely that she had heard the name, but it meant nothing to her in her trouble.

"Yes, my chum, the Snowy Owl. I'm the Fluffy one, don't you remember? The Snowy is a bit taller than you, but that is no matter; you can wear them perfectly well, I tell you. Come along, and I'll get you into them."

Peggy hung back, protesting faintly against appropriating the clothes of a person she had never seen; but finally she yielded to Bertha's vigorous pulls, and followed her down a winding stair, into a narrow room filled with a hubbub of girls in every stage of dressing and undressing. Viola Vincent fluttered up to her (it is difficult to flutter in a gymnasium suit, and only Viola's supremely butterfly quality enabled her to do it), a charming vision of pale blue, with a profusion of tiny brass buttons twinkling wherever a button could be put.

"Here you are!" she cried, airily. "I haven't seen you for an age. I've been telling everybody about you, the V. V's vis-À-vis. It sounds so quaint, doesn't it? I adore quaintness. How do you like my new suit, Fluffy? Isn't it too cute for anything? This is the first time I've worn it; I think it is too perfectly sweet to live in, don't you?"

"I hope not!" said Bertha, laughing. "We should be sorry to have you pass away, Vanity, because your dress is too sweet."

"No, but really!" continued Viola, earnestly. "Do I exaggerate, Fluffy? Isn't it the sweetest thing you ever saw? I ask because I want to know, you know!"

Bertha's only reply was to pull her pink ear good-naturedly, and then dive head-foremost into a locker.

"You find the Fluffy quaint?" said Viola to Peggy. "Yes? she is quaint, but delicious! So is the Snowy! I simply could not exist without them; they are the guiding stars of the corridor, don't you know? What are you about, Fluffy? What are you doing with the Snowy's togs? She has not come back, no!" clasping her hands in ecstasy. "Don't tell me the Snowy has come back, Fluff!"

"I certainly won't!" said Bertha, coolly. "She isn't coming back till day after to-morrow. Peggy Montfort is going to wear her things till her own are ready, that's all. Don't excite yourself too much, Vanity; it'll take the colour out of your hair."

"No! Do you think so?" replied Viola; "really? ah! here's V., ready at last. What I have to endure, V., waiting while you prink, no tongue can tell. Ta, dears, come up soon!" and she fluttered away, arm in arm with her chum.

"Is she always like that?" asked Peggy, bewildered.

"Who? Vanity? Oh, yes! there's no possible harm in Vanity; she is really the best hearted creature in the world. The other, though,—well, you want to be a little on your guard with Vivia. Oh, we are the best friends in the world, of course; only, her temper is a little uncertain at times, and it's just as well to know about it. There! why, the trousers fit you to perfection!" The trousers, as wide as the Flying Dutchman's, certainly fell comfortably enough about Peggy's stout knees.

"Now for the blouse! I'll put it over your head!"

A silent but breathless struggle followed, from which Peggy emerged panting and crimson, but victorious. "Oh, I do hope she—your chum—won't mind!" she cried. "I am so afraid I shall get them dirty!" for it was a whim of the Snowy Owl's to wear a white gym suit, and it was as fresh as if it were just out of the tub, as indeed it was.

"Oh, that is no matter! She washes them every week; she likes to wash; it's one of her accomplishments. Come along now!"

They ran up-stairs, and found the class just forming in ranks. A gesture bade them fall into line with the rest, and Peggy stood with her toes on a chalk mark, waiting the word of command.

It came. "Left foot forward—fall out!" At the command every girl put out her left foot as far as she could, and flung her whole weight forward on it. Peggy did the same, and fell on her nose with a resounding crash. The class giggled, but were sharply checked by the teacher.

"We will try this once more. Try to balance the body carefully! Take time! Once more! Left foot forward—fall out!"

Again the line dropped forward with one motion; and again our poor Peggy fell on her nose. This time the nose protested in its way, and bled; great crimson drops fell on the white plumage of the Snowy Owl. Almost crying with distress and mortification, Peggy felt for her handkerchief. Alas! she was not used to trousers, and no pocket could she find, though there was one, and her handkerchief was in it. What should she do? She was just about to make a bolt for the stairs, when a handkerchief was thrust into her hand. She clapped it to her suffering nose, and looked gratefully at her left-hand neighbour in the ranks. The girl nodded slightly, and said, "All serene! better ask leave to retire. Hold arms over head, stop it!" She was a slender girl, with a pensive face and melancholy blue eyes. Her hair was plainly parted, Madonna-fashion, and there was something remote and old-world about her whole look and air.

"Oh, thank you!" murmured poor Peggy. "You're awfully kind!" She hoped the tiresome bleeding would stop on the instant, but it did not; she was obliged to ask leave to go down-stairs; and receiving it, dashed down headlong, and cannoned violently against Vivia Varnham, who had gone down for something she had forgotten.

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" gasped Peggy. "I'm—awfully clumsy—"

"I think you are!" said the other, with a flash of her hazel eyes. "Perhaps you'll let me pass now, please, before you make another exhibition of yourself." She went on, with a scornful toss of her head.

Poor Peggy! her tears flowed fast over the friendly handkerchief. "I wish I was dead!" she sobbed. "I wish I had never come to this horrid, odious place, where everybody is so hateful. And I can't hold up my arms when I have to hold this to my nose all the time."

"Quite so!" said a quiet voice behind her. The sad-looking girl took her hands and held them straight up in one of her own, the other keeping the handkerchief in position. No word was spoken, but in five minutes the bleeding was stopped.

"Basin—water!" said the stranger. "Don't mention it!" as Peggy tried to falter her thanks. And she was gone.

Peggy waited till she felt sure of herself and her nose. Then she spoke severely to herself, and asked what Uncle John would say to such behaviour. "Everybody isn't hateful!" she said. "And anyhow, there are some things there that I can do, if I haven't learned this trick. I won't give up till I've gone up that rope."

Her eye had been caught by a stout rope dangling from the ceiling. This was in her own line, and she felt that if she could redeem herself in her own eyes, she should not care so much about all those other laughing eyes. And yet, perhaps she thought more about those eyes than she was aware of, for our Peggy was very human.

This time fortune favoured her. As she emerged from the lower regions, a girl was just trying to climb the rope; in fact, there were three ropes hanging side by side, and the climbing of them was part of the regular exercise. She sought Bertha, who was most sympathetic, not having been near enough to help Peggy.

"Climb the rope? Oh, you'd better not try that, Peggy! it takes a lot of practice. Why, I've been here two years, and I can't get to the top yet. Really, it's very hard. Let's come and swing on the ring, if you are quite sure about your poor nose."

But Peggy did not want to swing on the rings, nor to do anything else that Bertha proposed; she wanted to climb that rope, and she meant to do it; the prairie blood was roused.

"Well, I'll ask Miss Brent," said good-natured Bertha, finding her determined. "You say you have had some experience in climbing? Perhaps she'll let you go a little way up."

Miss Brent, interrogated, came and looked Peggy over carefully; felt her muscles, asked her a few questions, and then said, "You may have the next turn, Miss Montfort."

The girl on the rope next her was having a sad time of it. She swung this way and that; her legs waved wildly in the air; and at length she came down "all abroad," having only ascended a few feet. At the same moment, the girl on the next rope dropped, so that two were left unoccupied. Peggy advanced and laid her hand upon one rope, just as Vivia Varnham took possession of the other. On the third, the pensive girl with the Madonna braids was swinging easily, half-way up to the ceiling; she twisted her feet around the rope, and, so resting, observed the progress of the other two.

Up they went, hand over hand. Vivia Varnham gave a glance of disdain when she saw who her rival was. She was light and agile, and did not for an instant think that this heavy, clumsy creature could make any headway against her. She went up lightly and easily, but somehow the heavy, clumsy creature managed to keep abreast of her; was even gaining upon her, drawing up, up, above her head. Vivia put on a spurt, and passed Peggy, climbing very swiftly—for a moment; then the ache in her wrists compelled her to slacken her rate of speed, and the thickset figure came up, up, steadily and surely. Truth to tell, though Peggy Montfort was awkward, she was as strong as a steer. Her weight was not fat, but sheer bone and brawn; and her one hundred and forty pounds were easy enough for her to carry, even up a rope thirty feet long. But Vivia Varnham, with all her lightness and quickness, had little strength in her wrists. They ached painfully, but she would not give up. Her face flushed, her breath came in distressful gasps, she struggled on and up. They were more than half-way up; they had passed the quiet observer, swinging comfortably with her feet twisted in her rope. "Better go down, V.!" said the girl with the sad eyes. "She's too many for you!"

Vivia shook her head with an angry gesture. Her eyes swam, the pain in her wrists was unendurable; but she set her teeth, and struggled on, till from below came the voice of Miss Brent, calm and authoritative.

"Come down, Miss Varnham! You have gone far enough."

Most unwillingly, with sullen face and fluttering breath, Vivia slid to the floor. She expected, everybody expected, to hear the order repeated for the benefit of the newcomer, the audacious freshman who had ventured upon junior ground; for the rope-climbing was not generally attempted till the third year. But Miss Brent kept her eyes on Peggy, and smiled, and made no sign.

Peggy was enjoying herself immensely. She was not a swift climber, but there was no tiring her, and this, as she said to herself, was "great!" She wished Margaret could see her! No! It would frighten dear Margaret. Rita, then! Rita loved feats of skill; probably she could climb far better than she, Peggy, could; Rita was so light, so graceful, so fearless.

A shout rang from below. Something passed her on the next rope, light and swift as a bird in flight. She could almost touch the ceiling now; she looked up; there, at the very top of the next rope, was her friend of the dressing-room, gazing at her with melancholy blue eyes, and holding out a slender hand.

"Shake!" said the girl with the Madonna braids.