RHODA IS UNPOPULAR
The blindfolded Rhoda came down so awkwardly that Nan feared she
would be hurt. The girl from Tillbury screamed a warning--which was
useless.
But in that exciting moment Nan noted something that afterward gave
her a sidelight upon Rhoda Hammond's character. As the Western girl
felt herself going she snatched off the blindfolding towel.
Self-possession! Rhoda owned that attribute, largely developed. She
was cool, if angry.
When she landed on the padded platform, she fell on her knees, and
the fall must have jarred her. But she was up in a flash, and the
girl with the dipper, Minnie Wolff, found herself in the muscular
grasp of Rhoda's arms.
"There, now, I've had enough of this foolishness!" snapped the
Western girl, limping toward the platform steps. "I've wrenched my
knee, and I should hope you'd be satisfied. I want nothing more to
do with your baby plays! I came to Lakeview Hall to study and learn
something--"
"Oh, you are going to learn something all right," drawled Laura,
interrupting Rhoda's angry speech. "But I can see it is going to
take you some time, Miss Rhoda Hammond. You are going to have a
nice time here!"
Rhoda pushed through the group of girls with blazing face. Her eyes
were hard and dry. She had evidently hurt her knee quite badly, for
she could not walk without limping. Nan ran after her.
"Oh, Rhoda, don't take it so," she begged in a whisper. "It will
make it so much harder for you."
"I don't care!"
"But you want to be friends with us."
"With those girls?" repeated Rhoda, in scorn. "Not much!"
"Oh, yes, you do. Every one of them is nice."
"They act so."
"They are!" reiterated Nan. "And you made Minnie cry."
"What did she want to throw that water on me for?"
"But it didn't hurt you," Nan pointed out. "You are dressed for
it!"
"Yes," snapped Rhoda, looking down at the jumper and overalls. "I
look like a silly in these things."
"Well, you don't need to act like a silly," urged Nan, keeping pace
with her, as Rhoda left the gymnasium. "You are making it awfully
hard for yourself. The girls won't forgive you."
"Forgive me? Well, I like that!" scoffed Rhoda.
"Oh, yes. It was all in fun. We all have to go through some such
performance--when we are greenhorns."
"Not for me!" exclaimed the Western girl with emphasis.
Nan was silent for a moment, guiding the new girl through the
unfamiliar and only half-lighted passages to the back stairway.
Then Nan asked:
"Does your knee hurt?"
"Of course it does."
"I have some lotion in my room. It is good for a sprain, or
anything like that. I'll get it for you and you can rub it in well
when you go to bed."
"If those girls come around to bother me again--"
"I'm afraid they won't," said Nan, sorrowfully.
"You're _afraid_ they won't?"
"Yes. They may let you very much alone. You won't have much fun
here."
"Humph! I can flock by myself," said Rhoda, quite cheerfully.
"But you can have so much better times if you are friends with the
other girls."
"I don't know about that. I don't like any of them--as far as I've
gone. Except you. Out where I come from--at Rose Ranch--there are
plenty of Mexican girls and Indian girls who are much more ladylike
than this crowd. Why! these girls are savages."
"Oh, no, Rhoda! Not quite that," laughed Nan. "You don't
understand. And I am afraid they won't understand you."
"Who wants 'em to?" responded Rhoda Hammond gruffly.
Nan Sherwood took the liniment into Rhoda's room, and when she
returned, bringing back the overall suit to be returned to Henry,
she found her chum, Bess Harley, in their room, slowly preparing
for bed.
"Well! isn't that the greatest girl you ever saw?" exclaimed Bess.
"She will have a nice time here--not! And I should think you'd not
have anything to do with her, Nan. The other girls won't like it.
We're just going to ignore her. A girl who can't take a joke!"
"I shan't have much to do with her until she comes to her senses,"
Nan admitted. "But I am sorry for her, just the same."
"You'll waste your 'sorry' on that one," laughed Bess.
"Perhaps. But don't you realize, honey, that we came near being
just as foolish as Rhoda Hammond when we came here last fall?"
"Oh, nonsense!" ejaculated Bess; but she blushed.
"Think," said Nan, with twinkling eyes. "Don't you remember that
shoe-box lunch we brought with us and that the girls made so much
sport of? Didn't you get vexed?"
"Oh! Well! Yes, a little," admitted Bess. "But, Nan! I never acted
as foolishly as this Rhoda Hammond. Now, did I?"
"No, you did not, my dear," agreed her chum.
But she might honestly have claimed credit for this being a fact.
It had been Nan's better sense and her strong influence over her
chum that had kept Bess Harley from acting quite as unwisely as
Rhoda Hammond was now acting.
"I expect," was all Nan said, however, "that this poor Rhoda is
going to have a very unhappy time of it here, unless she changes
her attitude."
"Well, she deserves to. She spoiled our fun and she hurt Minnie
badly. I suppose she's had no sort of bringing-up, coming right
from that wild country."
Nan chuckled. "I wonder! She thinks we lack proper up-bringing. She
compares us unfavorably with the Mexican and Indian girls she has
been used to out on the ranch from which she comes."
"Good-night!" gasped Bess indignantly, as she plunged into bed.
It did not take a seeress to foretell Rhoda Hammond's unpopularity
during the opening days of this term at Lakeview Hall. It seemed
that before breakfast the next morning the whole school was buzzing
with the story of the doings of the girls of Corridor Four.
That a newcomer should set herself contrary to a custom that had
always been honored at the Hall, was considered unpardonable. Even
the older girls--seniors and juniors who thought themselves too
dignified for such escapades--had merely a sarcastic smile for the
new girl from the West. While the little girls--the "primes"--were
frankly curious, and could scarcely keep their gaze off Rhoda at
meals, or in the main hall at chapel.
The privilege of hazing had seldom been abused by the girls. Dr.
Prescott winked at the romps which never really hurt anybody. No
girl with "ingrowing dignity," as Amelia Boggs called it, could
hope to be happy with her fellows at Lakeview Hall.
"A proper amount of hazing is bound to reduce the size of the
sawney's ego," Laura remarked. "This wild Western person has a
swelled ego, if ever I saw one. But she shall be let alone, all
right, if that is what she is so anxious for."
Nan was, as she said, sorry for Rhoda; but she could do nothing
openly to help matters. She would not speak for the Western girl,
for she felt that, in justice, Rhoda was in the wrong.
Unlike many of the other girls, however, Nan failed to find
anything about Rhoda's character to dislike. Even Linda Riggs was
not pleased with the girl from Rose Ranch. The latter girl
threatened quite unconsciously to outshine the railroad magnate's
daughter in point of dress.
Mrs. Cupp had something to say about that. It was said tartly
enough, of course, and Rhoda had to take it before a good-sized
party of other girls.
"Where did your mother think you were coming to, Miss Hammond?"
Mrs. Cupp demanded when she had looked over the contents of Rhoda's
two trunks. "These clothes might be of use if you expected to
attend the opera, or appear in society. How absurd to dress a young
girl in such garments! Your mother--"
"Please, Mrs. Cupp, do not blame my mother if you think these
things are not suitable for me to wear. She is not at--at fault for
their selection. They were bought for me by a friend, mostly in
Chicago."
"Humph! Your mother should have attended to your being properly
dressed. This is a practical school, not a theatrical company, you
have come to," snapped Mrs. Cupp, who was always very severe in
matters of dress. "Your mother--"
"Don't criticize my mother, please," interrupted Rhoda again, and
her voice was sharper. "My--my mother is blind; she could not pick
out my clothes."
The statement sponged the smiles from the faces of all the girls
within hearing. Unpopular as the Western girl was, the fact she had
made public somehow made the other girls taste pity for her for the
first time. Bess Harley fairly sobbed when she and Nan got to their
room with the piles of their own garments, which Mrs. Cupp had
allowed them to take from their trunks.
"It--it's _mean_ that she should have a blind mother," cried
Bess angrily. "Why, it makes us sorry for her. And she doesn't
deserve to be pitied."
"I wonder?" murmured Nan, somewhat moved herself by the incident.
As the days went by, Nan Sherwood wondered more and more about
Rhoda Hammond. Was she deserving of some sympathy for her situation
in the school or not? Frankly, Nan was puzzled.
Of course Rhoda was being absolutely left out of all the social
good times and larks of the girls who should have been her mates.
Likewise in classes and in indoor athletics she seemed out of
place.
She had been schooled mostly at home, it appeared. Nan
understood--although Rhoda did not say as much--that her mother had
personally conducted much of her education until the last two
years. Then she had had a governess.
The latter seemed to have been an English woman with rather
old-fashioned ideas. Rhoda was grounded well in certain branches
and densely ignorant in others which Dr. Prescott considered
essential.
And in the athletic classes!
"Why, I thought these Western cowgirls were just like boys--that
they were even born with an ability to pitch a ball underhand, for
instance, which we girls are not," sighed Laura. "And look at that
thing! She doesn't know how to do anything right."
"Oh, not as bad as that," said Nan, smiling.
"Stop trying to make excuses for her, Nan Sherwood," commanded the
red-haired girl sharply. "I won't have it. She never saw a
basketball game before. She can scarcely lift herself waist-high on
the parallel bars. Couldn't chin herself five times in succession
on the trapeze to save her life. Why! she might as well be her own
grandmother, she knows so little about athletics."
"Huh!" added Bess Harley with equal disgust, "I heard her tell Mrs.
Gleason she thought such things were only for boys. She's a regular
sissy!" But this made her hearers laugh.
Nan joined in the laughter, but she added:
"You get into a wrestling match with her and see if she's a sissy.
She has developed her muscles by other means than gymnasium tricks.
She is so very wiry and strong--you have no idea!"
"But she walks so funny," remarked Lillie Nevins.
"Perhaps that is because she has walked so little," said Nan,
wisely.
"Humph!" Amelia Boggs commented, "has she been used to being pushed
in a baby carriage?"
"Distances are long out in the cattle country. Everybody rides, I
guess," Nan observed.
"Well," one of the older girls remarked, "she's no material for
basketball, or any other team. She can't even run, it seems. I
guess we'll have to pass her up."
Nor did Rhoda seem to mind being "passed up." At least, if she
missed the companionship of her schoolmates, she did not show it.
Perhaps Nan Sherwood worried more about Rhoda than Rhoda did about
herself.
There came a day, however, when the girls of Lakeview Hall saw
something in the girl from Rose Ranch that they were bound to
admire. Rhoda Hammond possessed one faculty that raised her, head
and shoulders, above most of her schoolmates who so derided her.