"No. She"s--dead."
There was a hush for a moment.
"Where"s your father--have you one of him?" It was Annabel this time.
Blue Bonnet made another dive in the trunk and brought forth a package.
From it she drew a photograph which she handed to Annabel.
"Is he in Texas--on the ranch you were telling us about?"
"No. He"s dead--too."
There was a longer silence this time, and then it was Sue who put her arm through Blue Bonnet"s shyly.
"I know what it means," she said. "I have lost my mother, too. I still have my father, though, thank Heaven, and Billy. You must know Billy--he"s my brother at Harvard--the best ever--why--"
Annabel lifted her hands in protest.
"Now, Sue"s going to take the pulpit," she said, "and we"ll get a discourse on Billy! Billy the great! Billy the supreme--Billy--"
Ruth gave Annabel a push.
"You"re jealous," she said, "because you haven"t got such a brother yourself. Billy"s all right. He"s everything Sue says he is."
In the midst of the banter that followed, the door opened, and Joy Cross entered.
She put her suitcase down by the bed, and nodded to the girls indifferently. They nodded back and went on with the inspection of Blue Bonnet"s wardrobe.
Blue Bonnet put the miniature carefully away in the bureau drawer, and, with that instinct of politeness which is inborn, went over to Joy and extended her hand.
Joy took it listlessly. The girls scarcely turned round.
When the clothes had all been put away, Annabel renewed her invitation to tea. She did not include Joy, and Blue Bonnet felt rather indignant.
It seemed so rude.
"You girls certainly have it in for my room-mate," she said, as she closed the door, and a wave of sympathy went back to Joy.
Ruth Biddle shrugged her shoulders and made a grimace.
"She isn"t in our crowd," she said, as if that excluded her from the right to exist--almost.
Annabel"s room was a good deal like Annabel. It inclined to frills. It was furnished charmingly in cretonnes--pink, with roses and trailing vines. Pennants from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, and many other colleges adorned the walls. Everything in view--and there was much--expressed Annabel. Ruth"s personality--if she had any--was entirely missing.
Annabel shook up a cushion and tucked it behind Blue Bonnet comfortably.
She had a hospitable manner that fitted pleasantly with the cosiness of the room. Blue Bonnet looked about admiringly.
"I didn"t know they allowed you to have so much in your room," she said, surprised.
"They don"t--ordinarily. I"ve been here a long time, and things acc.u.mulate. Anyway, I told Miss North that if I couldn"t have things the way I wanted them this year, I"d go somewhere else. They"ll do a good deal to keep you after they once get you. You"ll soon find that out."
"Oh, I don"t know," Ruth said from her end of the room, where she was operating a chafing dish, "they send you away fast enough if you don"t keep the rules. You remember that f.a.n.n.y Price, last year."
"Oh, well,--_that_, of course. f.a.n.n.y Price hadn"t any business here in the first place." Annabel began to arrange the tea cups.
"Will you have lemon in your tea?" she asked. "Do you mind if we call you Blue Bonnet? It"s something of a mouthful, but I like it."
"Please do. I should love it. I take lemon, thank you."
"It"s a good thing you do. Cream is an unknown quant.i.ty in this room. We did have some Eagle Brand, but Ruth spread the last of it on her crackers yesterday."
"On crackers?"
"Yes. Ever try it?"
Blue Bonnet made a face.
"Oh, it"s not so bad. You"ll come to it--some day when you"re starving."
"Starving? Don"t you get enough to eat here?"
"Yes--but it"s not the Copley Plaza--exactly. We manage to get fat, anyway. That reminds me--where"s Wee? Go get her, Sue, and ask her to bring over some Nabiscos, if she happens to have any handy. Wee"s a regular life-saving station, usually."
Sue dashed out of the room and came back in a minute with a very large, stout girl, whom she introduced as her room-mate, Deborah Watts--better known as "Wee."
Good nature, affability--all the essentials of comradeship--fairly oozed from Deborah Watts. She took Blue Bonnet"s hand in a grip that hurt, but Blue Bonnet felt its sincerity and squeezed back.
A bright girl in the school had once compared Deborah Watts to a family horse. Not a pretty comparison, but apt, when one knew Deborah.
The girl said that Deborah was safe, gentle, and reliable. Safe enough to be trusted with old people; gentle enough for children; and that she could, at times, get up enough ginger to give the young people a fair run. The comparison went even farther. The girl declared that sometimes--oh, very occasionally, under pressure and high living--Deborah could kick up her heels and light out with the best, and that when she did, people held up their hands in horror and said: "What ever in the world has got into Deborah Watts!"
Her room-mate and friends had beheld her in this enviable state a number of times, and had p.r.o.nounced her--in boarding-school vernacular--a perfect circus.
"Can you cook things in your room?" Blue Bonnet inquired of Ruth, gazing at the chafing dish with the water steaming in it.
"You can have a chafing dish, if that"s what you mean; that is, you can if you happen to be a Senior. Annabel and I graduate in June. Our menu is limited, however. We seldom roast fowl, or boil coffee"--she winked at Sue--"or try entrees, except--"
All three girls went off into peals of laughter. All but Wee Watts, who remained as sober as a judge.
"Do we, Wee?"
"Wee do!" giggled Annabel.
No one offered to explain the joke and Blue Bonnet looked mystified.
"First year?" Deborah inquired of Blue Bonnet.
"First," Blue Bonnet said. "I have answered that question fifty times to-day. I believe I"ll have a placard printed and hang it round my neck."