"Then we go to our rooms. Sometimes we settle down, and sometimes we don"t. It depends. Once in a while we have a feast. We"ll invite you next time."
Blue Bonnet looked interested.
"Where do you have it?"
"Oh, in our rooms sometimes--but it"s risky. The sky parlor is the best place. That"s up in the attic--under the eaves. It"s fine! There"s no teacher to bother. It"s a little cold just now. They don"t heat it, but you can put on your bath-robe and be comfy. We"re waiting now for Wee Watts to get her clean clothes back from home. You see, she only lives an hour or two out of the city, and she sends her things home to be washed. When they come back, her mother always fills up the suitcase with cakes and cookies and jam--well, not jam, any more. The last jar she sent, broke, and spilled all over a new silk waist she was sending Wee for a party. It was quite tragic."
"The loss of the jam--or the waist?"
"Both. It was hard on Wee, losing the waist. You see, she"s so stout she can"t borrow much from the rest of us."
Annabel came up at that moment and asked Sue to dance, so Carita and Blue Bonnet visited until the gong sounded.
On the way up to the study hall, Miss North stopped Blue Bonnet.
"Will you come to my office a moment after study hour?" she said. "I want to go over your program with you. The room is just beyond the reception hall on the first floor."
Blue Bonnet found Miss North waiting when she entered the room an hour later.
"You found your cla.s.ses this morning, all right?" she began.
"Yes, thank you, Miss North."
"And decided upon your course?"
"Yes. Professor Howe thought I could enter the Junior cla.s.s without any trouble. I"m taking college preparatory. I don"t know yet whether I"ll go to college or not, but my aunt wanted me to prepare."
There was a few moments" conversation relative to the work, and Miss North rose.
"Good night," she said, holding out her hand. "I hope you are going to be happy with us. You found the girls pleasant? Annabel Jackson is about your age."
"I"m not seventeen yet," Blue Bonnet said. "I reckon my clothes make me look older. I begged Aunt Lucinda to let me have them a little longer than I"ve been wearing. Yes, I like the girls very much. Good night."
In her own bed, under cover of darkness, Blue Bonnet had much to think about that night. Opposite her, as still as the dead, Joy Cross slumbered. Blue Bonnet"s mind went back over the day. How full it had been--and strange! She almost felt as if she had been transported to another world. In the stress and excitement of the new surroundings her old life faded like a dream. Even the We Are Sevens seemed remote and indistinct in her tired brain.
She dozed off, finally, to dream of marching to gongs. Gongs that urged and threatened; and of a certain German individual who lived in a garret, and who growled like a savage beast if she made the slightest sound as she pa.s.sed her door.
The next two weeks fairly flew along, and Blue Bonnet was too busy to be homesick. There were good long letters from home often; from the faithful We Are Sevens, full of news and cheer; and from Uncle Cliff, in far-off Texas.
Blue Bonnet found the course she had selected a hard one, with a good deal of outside reading in English. Then there was her music, vocal and instrumental. Practising took up a great deal of time.
The teacher of piano--Fraulein Schirmer--was very nice, Blue Bonnet thought, and she was glad to tell her aunt that she liked her, since she and Fraulein had been such good friends in Munich.
Because of Miss Clyde, Fraulein took much interest in Blue Bonnet, discovering a good deal of musical ability, she wrote Miss Clyde.
Mrs. White still continued to be the joy she promised, and Blue Bonnet looked forward to her vocal lessons with the keenest pleasure.
"Will I ever sing really well?" she asked Mrs. White one morning, and Mrs. White had answered:
"That depends upon yourself, and how much you want to sing. You have a good voice, plenty of excellent timbre in it. You have even more--the greatest essential of all--temperament. You live--you feel--you have the sympathetic quality that spells success--with work!"
Blue Bonnet went from her lesson feeling that she had the world almost in her grasp.
Her English teacher, too, Professor Howe--- Blue Bonnet could not understand why a woman should be called Professor--was delightful. A storehouse of knowledge, she made the cla.s.s work so interesting that the forty-five minutes of recitation usually pa.s.sed all too quickly.
Professor Howe was an unusually able woman, much looked up to by the Faculty and pupils. She was middle-aged--past the fortieth milestone, at any rate--and somewhat austere in manner. Those who knew her best declared that her stern demeanor was a professional veneer, put on in the cla.s.sroom for the sake of discipline, and that underneath she was intensely human and feminine. She had charge of the study hall and acted as a.s.sociate princ.i.p.al.
Professor Howe interested Blue Bonnet. She didn"t mind the austere manner at all. There was something behind it--a quick flash of the eye, a sudden smile, limited usually to a brief second; an intense, keen expression that acted like an electric battery to Blue Bonnet. It stimulated her to effort. No matter what else had to be neglected, English was invariably prepared.
And, as admiration usually begets admiration, Professor Howe was attracted to Blue Bonnet.
"Miss Elizabeth Ashe," she said to Miss North at the end of the second week, "promises to be a bright pupil. She has an unusually clear mind, and good judgment. She"s going to be quite a stimulus to the cla.s.s."
Miss North seemed a little surprised.
"That"s rather odd," she said. "Miss Root told me only a half hour ago that Miss Ashe was very indifferent in her mathematics--absolutely inattentive."
Professor Howe raised her eyebrows ever so slightly, but she made no comment.
Blue Bonnet could have explained. If not to Miss North"s satisfaction, to her own, entirely. She hated Miss Root, and she hated mathematics, which added fuel to fire.
At the end of the third week of school Blue Bonnet was summoned to Miss North"s office.
Miss North looked serious as she motioned Blue Bonnet to a seat and opened the conversation.
"I am very sorry to find that you are not doing well in your mathematics, Miss Ashe. What is the trouble?"
"I hate mathematics and I dislike Miss Root," Blue Bonnet replied with a frankness that quite took Miss North"s breath away.
"That is very disrespectful, Miss Ashe; I cannot have you speak of one of your teachers in that way."
"But I don"t like her, Miss North, not a bit!"
"That is not to the point. Why are you inattentive?"
"I"m not. I am only stupid!"
Miss North was obliged to smile.
"I can hardly think that," she said. "I have excellent reports from other teachers regarding your work."
Blue Bonnet let the compliment pa.s.s without any show of pride or pleasure.
"I meant stupid in mathematics. I always have been."