"Are you going to Miss Leland"s?"
"Yes."
"Is this your first year?"
"Yes."
"What"s your names?"
The Prescotts gave her the information, and she told them in exchange that her name was Maizie Forrest, that she was from Pittsburgh, that she had a brother at Yale, and another at Pomfret, and that she thought it no end of fun that they, the Prescotts, were going to Miss Leland"s.
After this flow of confidence, conversation languished and expired in the silence of dismal thoughts.
The hack drove up to the door, and deposited the four girls on the steps. Then they entered the hall, from which was issuing a perfect babel of feminine squeaks and chattering.
As Nancy and Alma stood together, frankly clinging hand to hand, a husky damsel rushed past them and precipitated herself on the neck and shoulders of the conversational Maizie.
"Maizie, darling!"
"Jane, dearest! When did you get here?"
"Been here hours. My dear, we"re going to room together! Isn"t that scrumptious?"
"Perfectly divine. Where"s Alice?"
"Hasn"t come yet. Come on, let"s go see M"amzelle."
The small, weepy girl stood still gazing mournfully at the rapturous meetings about her.
Nancy looked at her sympathetically, but she felt much too blue and strange herself to try to urge anyone else to be cheerful.
"I don"t know where we go, or what we"re supposed to do, do you?" she whispered to Alma.
"No. I hope to goodness it"s near supper time. There, I think that"s Miss Leland."
A tall, very thin, very erect lady, wearing nose-gla.s.ses attached to a long gold chain, and with sparkling, fluffy white hair that made her face look quite brown in contrast, was descending the stairs. Several of the girls rushed to her, and she kissed them peckishly. Evidently they were old pupils. Nancy and Alma heard her asking them about their dear mothers and their charming fathers, and where they had been during the summer, and if (playfully) they were going to work very, very hard.
And the girls were saying:
"_Dear_ Miss Leland, it"s so _nice_ to be back again!"
Nancy and Alma approached her a little uncertainly. The other girls drew back and frankly stared at them. "New girls," they heard whispered, and for some reason the appellation made them both feel terribly "out of it."
"Miss Leland," began Nancy, coloring, "I--I"m Anne Prescott--I--this is my sister Alma--I--er----"
"Why, yes. I"m so glad you got here safely," said Miss Leland, quite cordially, taking Nancy"s hand and Alma"s at the same time. "Of course you want to know where your room is. You two are going to room together to-night, anyway. Later you will probably have different roommates. Now, let me see--Mildred, this is Anne Prescott, and this is Alma. They are new girls, so I"m going to count on you to help them find themselves a little. They are going to be next door to you to-night, so will you take them up-stairs?"
A very handsome, very haughty-looking girl, with gray eyes and a Roman nose, shook hands with them briefly. The sisters followed her in a subdued silence. She was the sort of girl plainly destined to become one of the most frigid and formidable of dowagers; it was impossible to look at her profile, her fur coat, or to meet her cold, critical glance without immediately picturing her with a lorgnon, crisply marcelled gray hair, and the wintry smile with which the typical, unapproachable matron can freeze out the slightest attempt at an unwelcome friendliness on the part of an inconsequential person. Her last name was weighty with importance, since she was the daughter of Marshall Lloyd, the well-known railroad magnate.
"I shan"t like _her_," Nancy remarked to Alma, when this young lady had indicated their room to them, and left them with a curt announcement that they should go down-stairs in fifteen minutes.
"She is sort of sn.o.b-looking," agreed Alma, throwing her hat on her narrow white bed. "But there"s no sense in being prejudiced against a person right away. Goodness, this room is chilly. I wish we knew somebody here. I hate being a new girl. Everyone else sounds as if they are having such a good time. I feel dreadfully out of it, don"t you? And all the girls look at you as if they were wondering who in the world you are."
"Well, it"s only natural that we feel that way now," said Nancy, trying to sound cheerful. "Come on, we"ve got to hurry."
From the line of rooms along the corridor issued the unceasing chatter of gay voices; there was a continual scampering back and forth, bursts of tumultuous greetings, giggles, shrieks. Alma, comb in hand, stood at the doorway, listening with a wistful droop to her lips. Two doors down, four girls were perched up on a trunk, kicking it with their patent-leather heels, and gabbling like magpies. In the room opposite, five girls, curled up on the two beds, were gossiping blithely, while a sixth, a pretty, red-haired girl, was gaily unpacking her trunk, flinging her lingerie with great skill across the room into the open drawers of the bureau, which caught stockings and petticoats very much as a dog will catch a bone in his mouth. They were all having such a good time--and they all seemed to have a lengthy history of gay summer"s doings to relate. Each one jabbered away, apparently perfectly regardless of what the others were saying.
"Oh, my dear, I _did_ have the most marvellous time----"
"d.i.c.k told me----"
"Are you going to come out next winter----"
"Margie"s wedding was perfectly gorgeous--and _I_ caught the bouquet----"
"Tom is coming down for the midwinter dance----"
"Who _is_ that frump who"s rooming with Sara----"
"Dozens of new girls. Hope some of "em are human, anyway----"
"Come on, Alma. Hurry! You haven"t even washed yet," said Nancy, impatiently. "We"ve got to go down-stairs----"
"Yes, and stand around gaping like ninnies," added Alma, morosely, coming back to the mirror, and beginning to brush out her thick, yellow hair.
"It"ll be ever so much nicer when we come back here after the Christmas holidays," said Nancy, busily polishing her nails, to hide the mist that would creep over her eyes. "To-morrow we can fix up this room a bit--if we can put up some chintz curtains, and get a few books and cushions around, it"ll be as good as home, almost."
"But--but Mother won"t be here, and neither will Hannah--boo-hoo!" And here Alma quite suddenly burst out crying, wrinkling up her pretty face like a child of two. With the tears dripping off her chin, she continued to brush her hair vigorously, sobbing and sniffling pathetically. Nancy looked up, and, unable any longer to control her own tears, while at the same time she was almost hysterically amused by Alma"s ridiculously droll expression of grief, began to sob and giggle alternately. Alma, still clutching the brush, promptly threw herself into Nancy"s arms, and there they sat, clinging together, and frankly wailing like a pair of lost children, in full view of the corridor.
"I--I want to--g-go h-home----" sniffled Alma.
"I--I don"t like that girl with th-the n-nose----" wailed Nancy. "D-Do f-fix your hair, Alma. I-If you"re l-late for d-dinner w-we"ll be expelled. Here----" she tried to twist up Alma"s unruly mane, hardly realizing what she _was_ trying to do, while Alma tenderly mopped Nancy"s wet cheeks with her own little, soaking handkerchief.
"I--I say! You two aren"t _howling_, are you?" inquired a drawling, utterly amazed voice from the doorway. The two girls looked up, their hostile expressions plainly asking whose business it was if they _were_ howling--but promptly their hostility vanished.
A very tall, astonishingly lank girl was standing in the doorway, feet apart, and hands clasped behind her back, regarding them amiably through a pair of enormous, bone-rimmed goggles. Every now and again, she would blink her eyes, and screw up her face comically, while she continued to smile, showing a set of teeth as large and white as pebbles.
"You were saying something about being expelled. Are you expelled already? _Ex plus pello, pellere pulsi pulsum_--meaning to push out, or, as we say in the vernacular, to kick out, fire, bounce. Miss Drinkwater likes us to note the Latin derivations of all our English words, and I"ve got the habit. You two seem to be lachrymosus, or blue--by which I take it that you are new girls. I sympathize with you, although I am an ancient. Two years ago this very night, I wept so hard that I nearly gave my roommate pneumonia from the dampness.
How-do-you-do?" With this unconventional preliminary, accompanied by one of the friendliest and most disarming grins imaginable, the newcomer marched over to the bed and shook hands vigorously.
"My name is Charlotte Lucretia Adela Spencer. Really it is. You must take my word for it. But I only use the "Charlotte." The others I keep in case of emergency. I room next door, with Mildred Lloyd--who, incidentally, is a perfect lady, while _I_ am not. I was born in the year 1903, in the city of Denver, Colorado--but of that, more anon.
It"s tremendously interesting, but if _you_--is your name Alma?--if you don"t get your coiffure coifed, you"ll miss out on our evening repast.
Wiggle, my dear, wiggle!"
Thus urged, Alma "wiggled" accordingly; and while she carefully washed her tear-stained face, and put up her hair, their visitor, sprawling across the bed, kept up a running fire of ridiculous remarks, all uttered in her peculiar, dry, drawling voice, and punctuated with the oddest facial contortions. Yet, in spite of her nonsense, there was very evidently a good deal of real sense, and the kindest feeling behind it, and her singular face, too unusual to be called either plain or pretty, beamed with satisfaction when she had won a genuine peal of laughter from the two dejected Prescotts.
"We"d better go down now. To-night of course everything is more or less topsy-turvy. My trunk, I think, must be still out in Kokomo, Indiana, or some such place. I don"t even expect to see it for another month or so. But _I_ don"t mind. I"m a regular child of nature anyway--it"s just Amelia who"s pernickety about our appearing in full regalia every night for dinner. Amelia is Leland, of course. She"s tremendously keen on preserving a refining influence about the school, and I think she looks on me as a rather demoralizing factor. There goes the gong."
The three went down-stairs together, Charlotte linking herself between Nancy and Alma.
As if by magic, the din of a few moments before had been lulled. The fifty or sixty girls had gathered in the large reception room, where a wood-fire was blazing up a huge stone chimney, and where Miss Leland, wearing a dignified black evening dress, was seated in a pontifical chair, chatting with eight or ten of her charges, with the air of a gracious hostess. All the voices had sunk to a lower key.