CHAPTER I 

JUST AN ARGUMENT 

"It's positively cruel!" pouted Jennie Allen, one of a group of girls occupying a garden bench in the ample grounds of Miss Stearne's School for Girls, at Beverly. 

"It's worse than that; it's insulting," declared Mable Westervelt, her big dark eyes flashing indignantly. 

"Doesn't it seem to reflect on our characters?" timidly asked Dorothy Knerr. 

"Indeed it does!" asserted Sue Finley. "But here comes Mary Louise; let's ask her opinion." 

"Phoo! Mary Louise is only a day scholar," said Jennie. "The restriction doesn't apply to her at all." 

"I'd like to hear what she says, anyhow," remarked Dorothy. "Mary Louise has a way of untangling things, you know." 

"She's rather too officious to suit me," Mable Westervelt retorted, "and she's younger than any of us. One would think, the way she poses as monitor at this second-rate, run-down boarding school, that Mary Louise Burrows made the world." 

"Oh, Mable! I've never known her to pose at all," said Sue. "But, hush; she mustn't overhear us and, besides, if we want her to intercede with Miss Stearne we must not offend her." 

The girl they were discussing came leisurely down a path, her books under one arm, the other hand holding a class paper which she examined in a cursory way as she walked. She wore a dark skirt and a simple shirtwaist, both quite modish and becoming, and her shoes were the admiration and envy of half the girls at the school. Dorothy Knerr used to say that "Mary Louise's clothes always looked as if they grew on her," but that may have been partially accounted for by the grace of her slim form and her unconscious but distinctive poise of bearing. Few people would describe Mary Louise Burrows as beautiful, while all would agree that she possessed charming manners. And she was fifteen--an age when many girls are both awkward and shy. 
did she have a light skirt on?
She wore a dark skirt 