They were a very jolly set of schoolgirls whom Aunt Helen came out on to the front steps to welcome. Kathleen O'Riley was a bright Irish girl, with the prettiest suspicion of a brogue imaginable, and that winning manner which seems specially to belong to the children of the Emerald Isle. Susie and Mary Hirst were the daughters of a rising Warford physician, and were pleasant and amusing, though they had not the racy humour of Dorothy Gower. Evelyn Proctor was full of high spirits, while shy Lucy Thorburn was perhaps Lilian's favourite among them all.