She was glad that Connie hadn't been sent to her boarding-school, so that
nothing could come between her and Priscilla Heaven.


Priscilla was her real friend.

It had begun in her third term, when Priscilla first came to the school,
unhappy and shy, afraid of the new faces. Harriett took her to her room.

She was thin, thin, in her shabby black velvet jacket. She stood looking
at herself in the greenish glass over the yellow-painted chest of drawers.
Her heavy black hair had dragged the net and broken it. She put up her
thin arms, helpless.

"They'll never keep me," she said. "I'm so untidy."

"It wants more pins," said Harriett. "Ever so many more pins. If you put
them in head downwards they'll fall out. I'll show you."

Priscilla trembled with joy when Harriett asked her to walk with her; she
had been afraid of her at first because she behaved so beautifully.

Soon they were always together. They sat side by side at the dinner table
and in school, black head and golden brown leaning to each other over the
same book; they walked side by side in the packed procession, going two by
two. They slept in the same room, the two white beds drawn close together;
a white dimity curtain hung between; they drew it back so that they could
see each other lying there in the summer dusk and in the clear mornings
when they waked.