APPROACHING THE PROMISED LAND
Tom had tried to remove the smut of the steamboat engine-room from his
face with his handkerchief; but as his sister told him, his martial
appearance in the uniform of the Seven Oaks cadets was rather spoiled
by "a smootchy face." There wasn't time then, however, to make any
toilet before the train left. They were off on the short run to Seven
Oaks in a very few minutes after leaving the _Lanawaxa_.
Tom was very much excited now. He craned his head out of the car
window to catch the first glimpse of the red brick barracks and dome of
the gymnasium, which were the two most prominent buildings belonging to
the Academy. Finally the hill on which the school buildings stood
flashed into view. They occupied the summit of the knoll, while the
seven great oaks, standing in a sort of druidical circle, dotted the
smooth, sloping lawn that descended to the railroad cut.
"Oh, how ugly!" cried Helen, who had never seen the place before. "I
do hope that Briarwood Hall will be prettier than _that_, or I shall
want to run back home the very first week."
Her brother smiled in a most superior way.
"That's just like a girl," he said. "Wanting a school to look pretty!
Pshaw! I want to see a jolly crowd of fellows, that's what I want. I
hope I'll get in with a good crowd. I know Gil Wentworth, who came
here last year, and he says he'll put me in with a nice bunch. That's
what I'm looking forward to."
The train was slowing down. There was a handsome brick station and a
long platform. This was crowded with boys, all in military garb like
Tom's own. They looked so very trim and handsome that Helen and Ruth
were quite excited. There were boys ranging from little fellows of
ten, in knickerbockers, to big chaps whose mustaches were sprouting on
their upper lips.
"Oh, dear me!" gasped Ruth. "See what a crowd we have got to go
through. All those boys!"
"That's all right," Tom said, gruffly. "I'll see you to the stage.
There it stands yonder--and a jolly old scarecrow of a carriage it is,
too!"
He was evidently feeling somewhat flurried himself. He was going to
meet more than half the great school informally right there at the
station. They had gathered to meet and greet "freshmen."
But the car in which our friends rode stopped well along the platform
and very near the spot where the old, brown, battered, and dust-covered
stage coach, drawn by two great, bony horses, stood in the fall
sunshine. Most of the Academy boys were at the other end of the
platform.
Gil Wentworth, Tom's friend, had given young Cameron several pointers
as to his attitude on arrival at the Seven Oaks station. He had been
advised to wear the school uniform (he had passed the entrance
examinations two months before) so as to be less noticeable in the
crowd.
Very soon a slow and dirge-like chant arose from the cadets gathered on
the station platform. From the rear cars of the train had stepped
several boys in citizen's garb, some with parents or guardians and some
alone, and all burdened with more or less baggage and a doubtful air
that proclaimed them immediately "new boys." The hymn of greeting rose
in mournful cadence:
"Freshie! Freshie! How-de-do!
We're all waiting here for you.
Hold your head up!
Square each shoulder!
Thrust your chest out!
_Do_ look bolder!
Mamma's precious--papa's man--
Keep the tears back if you can.
Sob! Sob! Sob!
It's an awful job--
Freshie's leaving home and mo-o-ther!"
The mournful wailing of that last word cannot be expressed by mere
type. There were other verses, too, and as the new boys filed off into
the path leading up to the Academy with their bags and other
encumbrances, the uniformed boys, _en masse_, got into step behind them
and tramped up the hill, singing this dreadful dirge. The unfortunate
new arrivals had to listen to the chant all the way up the hill. If
they ran to get away from the crowd, it only made them look the more
ridiculous; the only sensible way was to endure it with a grin.
Tom grinned widely himself, for he had certainly been overlooked. Or,
he thought so until he had placed the two girls safely in the big
omnibus, had kissed Helen good-bye, and shaken hands with Ruth. But
the girls, looking out of the open door of the coach, saw him descend
from the step into the midst of a group of solemn-faced boys who had
only held back out of politeness to the girls whom Tom escorted.
Helen and Ruth, stifling their amusement, heard and saw poor Tom put
through a much more severe examination than the other boys, for the
very reason that he had come dressed in his uniform. He was forced to
endure a searching inquiry regarding his upbringing and private
affairs, right within the delighted hearing of the wickedly giggling
girls. And then a tall fellow started to put him through the manual of
arms.
Poor Tom was all at sea in that, and the youth, with gravity, declared
that he was insulting the uniform by his ignorance and caused him to
remove his coat and turn it inside out; and so Helen and Ruth saw him
marched away with his stern escort, in a most ridiculous red flannel
garment (the lining of the coat) which made him conspicuous from every
barrack window and, indeed, from every part of the academy hill.
"Oh, dear me!" sighed Helen, wiping her eyes and almost sobbing after
her laughter. "And Tommy thought he would escape any form of hazing!
He wasn't so cute as he thought he was."
But Ruth suddenly became serious. "Suppose we are greeted in any such
way at Briarwood?" she exclaimed. "I believe some girls are horrid.
They have hazing in some girls' schools, I've read. Of course, it
won't hurt us, Helen----"
"It'll be just fun, I think!" cried the enthusiastic Helen and then she
stopped with an explosive "Oh!"
There was being helped into the coach by the roughly dressed and
bewhiskered driver, the little, doll-like, foreign woman whom they
thought had been left behind at Portageton.
"There ye air, Ma'mzell!" this old fellow said. "An' here's yer
bag--an' yer umbrella--an' yer parcel. All there, be ye? Wal, wal,
wal! So I got two more gals fer Briarwood; hev I?"
He was a jovial, rough old fellow, with a wind-blown face and beard and
hair enough to make his head look to be as big as a bushel basket. He
was dressed in a long, faded "duster" over his other nondescript
garments, and his battered hat was after the shape of those worn by
Grand Army men. He limped, too, and was slow in his movements and
deliberate in his speech.
"I s'pose ye _be_ goin' ter Briarwood, gals?" he added, curiously.
"Yes," replied Ruth.
"Where's yer baggage?" he asked.
"We only have our bags. Our trunks have gone by the way of Lumberton,"
explained Ruth.
"Ah! Well! All right!" grunted the driver, and started to shut the
door. Then he glanced from Ruth and Helen to the little foreign lady.
"I leave ye in good hands," he said, with a hoarse chuckle. "This here
lady is one o' yer teachers, Ma'mzell Picolet." He pronounced the
little lady's name quite as outlandishly as he did "mademoiselle." It
sounded like "Pickle-yet" on his tongue.
"That will do, M'sieur Dolliver," said the little lady, rather tartly.
"I may venture to introduce myself--is it not?"
She did not raise her veil. She spoke English with scarcely any
accent. Occasionally she arranged her phrases in an oddly foreign way;
but her pronunciation could not be criticised. Old Dolliver, the stage
driver, grinned broadly as he closed the door.
"Ye allus make me feel like a Frenchman myself, when ye say 'moosher,'
Ma'mzell," he chuckled.
"You are going to Briarwood Hall, then, my young ladies?" said Miss
Picolet.
"Yes, Ma'am," said Ruth, shyly.
"I shall be your teacher in the French language--perhaps in deportment
and the graces of life," the little lady said, pleasantly. "You will
both enter into advanced classes, I hope?"
Helen, after all, was more shy than Ruth with strangers. When she
became acquainted she gained confidence rapidly. But now Ruth answered
again for both:
"I was ready to enter the Cheslow High School; Helen is as far advanced
as I am in all studies, Miss Picolet."
"Good!" returned the teacher. "We shall get on famously with such
bright girls," and she nodded several times.
But she was not really companionable. She never raised her veil. And
she only talked with the girls by fits and starts. There were long
spaces of time when she sat huddled in the corner of her seat, with her
face turned from them, and never said a word.
But the nearer the rumbling old stagecoach approached the promised land
of Briarwood Hall the more excited Ruth and Helen became. They gazed
out of the open windows of the coach doors and thought the country
through which they traveled ever so pretty. Occasionally old Dolliver
would lean out from his seat, twist himself around in a most impossible
attitude so as to see into the coach, and bawl out to the two girls
some announcement of the historical or other interest of the localities
they passed.
Suddenly, as they surmounted a long ridge and came out upon the more
open summit, they espied a bridle path making down the slope, through
an open grove and across uncultivated fields beyond--a vast blueberry
pasture. Up this path a girl was coming. She swung her hat by its
strings in her hand and commenced to run up the hill when she spied the
coach.
She was a thin, wiry, long-limbed girl. She swung her hat excitedly
and although the girls in the coach could not hear her, they knew that
she shouted to Old Dolliver. He pulled up, braking the lumbering
wheels grumblingly. The newcomer's sharp, freckled face grew plainer
to the interested gaze of Ruth and Helen as she came out of the shadow
of the trees into the sunlight of the dusty highway.
"Got any Infants, Dolliver?" the girl asked, breathlessly.
"Two on 'em, Miss Cox," replied the stage driver.
"Then I'm in time. Of course, nobody's met 'em?"
"Hist! Ma'mzell's in there," whispered Dolliver, hoarsely.
"Oh! She!" exclaimed Miss Cox, with plain scorn of the French teacher.
"That's all right, Dolliver. I'll get in. Ten cents, mind you, from
here to Briarwood. That's enough."
"All right, Miss Cox. Ye allus was a sharp one," chuckled Dolliver, as
the sharp-faced girl jerked open the nearest door of the coach and
stared in, blinking, out of the sunlight.