round the festive board like seven plain little currantless buns on a
plate.

"Yes! isn't she! She's wonderful, I think, and oh! so very different
to all of us."

"I found the very word to suit her in the dictionary," rather
importantly added Susan Brown, "_bizarre_----"

"Whatever does it mean?" inquired Annie Smith, who was destined never
again to run up against the word or its meaning during the rest of her
neutral life.

"Er--a kind of a--er--_je ne sais quoi_ in the temperament--not exactly
a nonconformist, you know; but just a little--well, not _quite_ like
_us_!"

"I see!" contentedly replied mystified Annie Smith. "But I _do_ love
her; she's such a dear. So gentle and so ready to help everybody, and
so _splendid_ at sports. What tremendous friends she and Jessica have
become, haven't they, since the night of the scare? I often wonder
what made her walk in her sleep like that; she's never done it since."

"Indigestion, I've always thought. Cookie was away on her holidays, if
you remember, and her _locum tenens_, understudy, you know, made pastry
like cement; I always thought, too, that Principal gave her that lovely
little room right away from the rest of us on account of it--the
sleep-walking, I mean. I'm sure I should have _died_ if I'd found her
standing over me in the moonlight in the middle of the night. It must
be awfully jolly though having someone in India who writes to you every