"Well, yes; just a little bit," said Gwin, her eyes dancing.

"It's more than a little bit," said Bessie. "Oh, Gwin, you don't know
what a nuisance it is to keep my room in order, and sometimes I forget
the things dear mother tells me, and I am impatient with poor little
Judy, who takes, I must say, a fiendish delight in putting my things in
hiding. Now, our rules might include tidiness of person and order
generally. It's no trouble to me to keep my books in order, nor my mind
in order; but I do hate washing my hands before every meal, and brushing
my hair and doing it up in a fashionable roll at the back of my head."

"Oh, my dear child," said Elma, "do you imagine for a moment that that
excrescence at the back of your head is fashionable? I never saw
anything more dowdy."

"Dowdy? Is it?" said Bessie. "I spent five minutes over it this morning,
and twisted it up three times in order to give it that horrid little
handle of a jug look which you all aspire to. Well, well, I don't
suppose we need add to our rules that the girls who belong to the
society are to be fashionable."

"It would be a really good idea if we did," said Elma. "I cannot see why
schoolgirls should be a lot of frumps. Our society is to effect a
certain object which can never be acquired unaided in a great school
like Middleton. We want to be as ladylike, as refined, as nice as if we
belonged to a very small and select school. We get the best teaching at
Middleton, but I don't suppose we get the best manners."

"Well, let us add all these things to the rules," said Gwin, "and let us
begin to put them down at once. First, as to the name. Until we can