They made several friends, chief among whom were Ellen Gray and Louisa Agnew.  This last intimacy Lilly resented highly, and seemed to consider as an affront to herself.  With no one, however, was Katy so intimate as Clover was with Rose Red.  This cost Katy some jealous pangs at first.  She was so used to considering Clover her own exclusive property that it was not easy to share her with another; and she had occasional fits of feeling resentful, and injured, and left out.  These were but momentary, however.  Katy was too healthy of mind to let unkind feelings grow, and by and by she grew fond of Rose and Rose of her, so that in the end the sisters share their friend as they did other nice things, and neither of them was jealous of the other.

But, charming as she was, a certain price had to be paid for the pleasure of intimacy with Rose.  Her overflowing spirits, and “the little fiend inside her,” were always provoking scrapes, in which her friends were apt to be more or less involved.  She was very pen intent and afflicted after these scrapes; but it didn’t make a bit of difference:  the next time she was just as naughty as ever.

“What are you?” said Katy, one day, meeting her in the hall with a heap of black shawls and aprons on her arm.

“Hush!” whispered Rose, mysteriously, “don’t say a word.  Senator Brown is dead—­our senator, you know.  I’m going to put my window into mourning for him, that’s all.  It’s a proper token of respect.”

Two hours later, Mrs. Nipson, walking sedately across the common, noticed quite a group of students, in the president’s yard, looking up at the Nunnery.  She drew nearer.  They were admiring Rose’s window, hung with black, and decorated with a photograph of the deceased senator, suspended in the middle of a wreath of weeping-willow.  Of course she hurried upstairs, and tore down the shawls and aprons; and, equally of course, Rose had a lecture and a mark; but, dear me! what good did it do?  The next day but one, as Katy and Clover sat together in silent study hour, their lower drawer was pushed open very noiselessly and gently, till it came out entirely, and lay on the floor, and in the aperture thus formed appeared Roses’s saucy face flushed with mischief.  She was crawling through from her own room!

“Such fun!” she whispered; “I never thought of this before!  We can have parties in study hours, and all sorts of things.”

“Oh, go back, Rosy!” whispered Clover in agonized entreaty, though laughing all the time.

“Go back?  Not at all!  I’m coming in,” answered Rose, pulling herself through a little farther.  But at that moment the door opened:  there stood Miss Jane!  She had caught the buzz of voices, as she passed in the hall, and had entered to see what was going on.

Rose, dreadfully frightened, made a rapid movement to withdraw.  But the space was narrow, and she had wedged herself, and could move neither backward nor forward.  She had to submit to being helped through by Miss Jane, in a series of pulls, while Katy and Clover sat by, not daring to laugh or to offer assistance.  When Rose was on her feet, Miss Jane released her with a final shake, which she seemed unable to refrain from giving.