"You go ahead; I'm in no hurry" and the grateful acceptance, "Oh, you dear, honestly, aren't you? I've got to make an eight o'clock" and the rest of the chatter of the girls going to and from the bath.
One tapped gently at her door. "Breakfast in ten minutes," she called with friendly warning.
"Oh, thank you!" Fidelia replied. "I'm nearly ready."
She was dressing slowly and carefully, giving particular attention to her hair. She liked to dress for a definite purpose and as she gazed into the glass she thought of how David Herrick had viewed her under the light of the glaring street lamp last night. "He liked me," she thought. As she brushed her glorious hair, she thought of him seeing its color by daylight and she thought of Alice Sothron arranging her soft, dark hair to please the same man.
When the gong sounded, Fidelia descended to breakfast, neither the first nor the last of the fifteen girls in the dining-room. She had met them all at dinner last evening and she was aware that they had talked her over since that occasion; each girl knew whether or not she liked Fidelia Netley and probably most of them had verbally declared themselves. Fidelia felt conscious of friends here, foes there, as she replied to the girls' good mornings. There were two tables in the dining-room and Fidelia's place was at the larger, which was set for eight. Her neighbor on her left was the same as at dinner last night; but a girl named Edith Lacey, who had been next her on the right at dinner, now was two places away and a thin, intense, nervous girl, who wore glasses and whose
