Jenny Baily returns to Balcombe Hall in this third and final installment of Harriet Martyn's trilogy devoted to her (mis)adventures at school. Asked to look after fellow Scot Maggie Mckinnon, a working class Glasgow girl sent to school by her aunt, who won a football sweepstakes, Jenny finds that her charge has taken up with rebellious twins and fellow newcomers, Jane and Polly Wilberforce, who never met a rule or requirement they didn't object to. In a principled fashion, of course. The natural tensions of this situation are joined to those created when the School and White House juniors are required to share a common room, and Jenny and her friends run afoul of the snobby White House girls and their insufferable matron, Mrs. Gould. Throw in some jewel thieves lurking about, and you have another eventful term at Balcombe Hall...

On the whole, I found Jenny and the New Girls to be the weakest of the trilogy, featuring a cast of new characters with whom I had great deal of difficulty sympathizing. The eponymous new girls were irritating, and the twins' objections were often petty. Surprisingly, I didn't find working class Maggie's travails any more appealing, although I normally enjoy "fish out of water" stories in which the common man (or girl) makes good. Much as in Jenny and the New Headmistress, authority figures here are questionable in their judgment. Mrs. Gould of course, with her abusive conduct, is completely illegitimate, but Miss Hamilton also sometimes displays a lack of evenhandedness in her treatment of the School House girls that is disturbing. Perhaps we are meant to think that, liking them better, she is harder on them? Whatever the case may be, although I was glad to have read this, in order to complete the trilogy, I do not highly recommend it, for its own sake. ( )