Miss Chadwick, the graduate of Birchgate Horticultural College, who was to run the new experiment, arrived at the end of the week, and brought two students as her assistants. They were a fresh, jolly-looking trio, with faces rosy from open-air work, and serviceable hands which caused a considerable flutter among those of the school who went in for manicure. At tea-time they talked gaily of onion-beds, intensive culture, irrigation, proteids, white Wyandottes, trap-nests, insecticides, sugar-beets, and bacteria. Miss Todd, keenly interested, joined in the conversation with the zeal of a neophyte; Miss Beverley, the nature-study side of whose education had been neglected, and who scarcely knew a caterpillar from an earthworm, followed with the uneasy air of one who is out of her depth; the school, eating their bread-and-butter and blackberry jam, sat and listened to the talk at the top end of the table.