SCHOOL GIRLS.
Several years have passed since that day in California when Nan
Barrington and Robert Widdemere had parted so sadly and neither had heard
ought of the other in all that time.
Nan, in a home-like girls' school near Boston, The Pine Crest Seminary,
had blossomed into as charming a young lady as even Miss Ursula could
desire, and that proud woman, who had changed little with the years,
often gazed at the beautiful dark girl, silently wondering if it might be
possible that Nan was not a real gypsy after all.
True to her promise to the dear Miss Dahlia, Nan had worn quiet colors
like the other gorigo maidens, and, during the three and a half years
that she had been at the school, nothing had occurred that would even
suggest the roving life of her childhood, but unfortunately an hour was
approaching when that suspicion would be aroused.
The Miss Barringtons remained during the winter months in Boston, but
they frequently visited the school, and, during the summer, they took Nan
with them to their cabin on the rocky and picturesque coast of Maine.
One Saturday afternoon Miss Dahlia was seated in the little reception
room at the school and a maid had gone in search of the girl. First she
referred to a chart in the corridor, which told where each of the forty
pupils should be at that hour, and then, going to the music room, she
tapped on the door. The sweet strains of a harp drifted out to her, and
she tapped again.
"Come in," a singing voice called, and the door opened.
"Miss Nan, it's your aunt, Miss Barrington, who is waiting to see you."
"Oh, I thank you, Marie!" the happy girl exclaimed, then, springing up
from the seat by her beautiful golden instrument, she said happily to the
friend who was standing near: "Phyllis do come with me and meet my Aunt.
I am always telling her about you, but you have been so occupied with one
task or another that I have never had the opportunity to have you two
meet each other."
Then as she covered her harp, she continued: "My Aunt Dahlia believes you
to be as beautiful as a nymph and as joyous as a lark." Then whirling and
catching both hands of her friend, Nan cried, "And when Aunt Dahlia
really sees you, what do you suppose she will think?"
"That I'm a frumpy old grumpy, I suppose," Phyllis laughingly replied.
"Indeed not!" Nan declared. "You're the most beautiful creature that
Nature ever fashioned with sunshine for hair, bits of June sky for eyes,
the grace of a lily and--"
"Nan, do stop! I'll think that you are making fun of me, and all this
time your Aunt Dahlia waits above. Come let us go. I am eager to meet
her." These two girls had been room-mates and most intimate friends since
Phyllis came to the school at the beginning of the year.
No two girls could be more unlike as Nan had said. She was like October
night, and her friend was like a glad June day.
"Aunt Dahlia, dearie," Nan exclaimed a few moments later, as she embraced
the older lady, "here at last is my room-mate, Phyllis. You are the two
whom I most love, and I have so wanted you to know each other."
"And you look just exactly as I knew you would from all our Nan has told
me about you. Just as sweet and pretty."
Miss Dahlia's kind face did not reveal that she was even a day older than
she had been that Thanksgiving nearly four years before.
Nan asked about Miss Barrington, the elder and was told, that, as usual,
she was busy with clubs of many kinds. "We are very unlike, my sister,
and I," the little lady explained to Phyllis, "I like a quiet home life,
Ursula is never happier than when she is addressing a large audience of
women, and it does not in the least fluster her if there are men among
them, on weighty questions of the day. Yes, we are very unlike."
"I am glad that you are." Nan nestled lovingly close to the little old
lady. "Not but that I greatly admire and truly do care for Aunt Ursula.
She has been very kind to me since she began to like me." Nan laughed,
then stopped as though she had been about to say something she ought not,
as indeed she had been. She had nearly said that her Aunt Ursula had
started to really like her when she felt that the girl had been properly
civilized and Christianized, for, ever since the talk she had had with
Robert Widdemere, Nan had really tried in every way to accept the
religion of the gorigo.
"Aunt Dahlia," she suddenly exclaimed, "what do you suppose is going to
happen? The music master has offered a medal of gold to the one of us
whose rendering of a certain piece, which he has selected, shall please
him the most at our coming recital. Phyllis is trying for it on the
violin; Muriel Metcalf and I on the harp, and Esther Willis on the piano.
I do hope you and Aunt Ursula will be able to come."
"Nothing but illness could keep me away," Miss Dahlia said as she rose to
go.