FIRST IMPRESSIONS
It was soon settled that Betty and Bobby were to have the center room in
a suite of three and Libbie and Frances should be on one side of them,
and Louise and Constance Howard on the other. There was a perfectly
appointed bathroom opening off the center room which the six were to
share. Norma and Alice Guerin were given a room that adjoined that
occupied by Libbie and Frances, but nominally, Miss Lacey explained, they
would be considered as a unit in the next suite of three connecting
rooms. Fortunately two very friendly, quiet girls drew the room
immediately next to the Guerin girls.
"But, Betty, listen," whispered Norma Guerin, drawing Betty aside as a
great bumping and banging announced the arrival of the trunks. "Who do
you suppose has the room next to the Bennett sisters? Ada Nansen and Ruth
Gladys Royal!"
"You are in hard luck!" commented Bobby, who had overheard, as she danced
off to open the door to the grinning expressman.
"All the porters are busy!" the man explained.
"So I just told 'em Tim McCarthy wasn't one to stand by and let work go
undone. Where would ye be wantin' these little bags put now?"
He had a trunk on his back that, as Bobby afterward remarked to Betty,
"would have done for an elephant."
"Girls, whose trunk is this?" demanded Bobby.
"Not mine!" came like a well-drilled chorus.
"'Miss Ada Nansen,'" read Betty, examining the card. "Bobby, that's one
of the five!"
They directed the perspiring expressman to the right door and, it is to
be regretted, shamelessly peeped while he toiled up and down bringing the
five trunks and three hat boxes. Then he began on the baggage consigned
to Ruth Gladys Royal, and the watchers counted three trunks.
Betty looked at the Guerin girls and laughed.
"Eight trunks!" she gasped. "They can't get that number in one room.
Not and have any room for the furniture. Norma, do go and see what
you can see."
Norma sped away, and returned as speedily, her eyes blazing.
"What do you think?" she demanded furiously. "They've had some of 'em put
in our room, three I counted, and two in the Bennett girls' room. They're
as mad as hops!"
"The Bennett girls are my friends," declared Bobby Littell sententiously.
"I only hope they're mad enough to hop right down to the office and
explain the state of things."
But the luncheon gong sounded just then, and a laughing, colorful throng
of femininity swept down the broad stairs to the dining room.
"How lovely!" said Betty involuntarily.
There were no long tables in the large, airy room. Instead, round tables
that seated from six to eight, each daintily set and with a slender vase
of flowers in the center of each. Betty and Bobby had the same thought at
the same moment.
"If we could only sit together, all of us!" their eyes telegraphed.
"They're all taking the tables they want and standing by the chairs,"
whispered Betty. "Let's do that."
A table set for eight was close to the door. Betty, Bobby, Louise,
Frances, Libbie, Constance, Norma and Alice gently surrounded this and
stood quietly behind the chairs.
Some one, somewhere, gave a signal, and the roomful was seated as
if by magic.
"I see--those four tables over by the window are for the teachers,"
whispered Betty. "I see Miss Anderson and Miss Lacey, and that
white-haired woman must be the principal. Yes, and girls, there's that
woman whom the boys tormented so on the train!"
Sure enough, there she was, looking even more severe now that her hat
was removed and her sharp features were unrelieved.
"If this isn't fun! I'm sorry for poor Esther at Miss Graham's,"
said Bobby, looking about her with delight. "Mercy, what do you
suppose this is?"
One of the young clerks from the office approached the table, a large
cardboard sheet in her hand.
"I'm filling in the diagram," she explained. "You mustn't change your
seats without permission. Tell me your names, and I'll put you down in
the right spaces."
Betty looked over her shoulder as she wrote down their names. Like the
diagram of the seating space of a theatre, the tables and chairs were
plainly marked. Betty swiftly calculated that between one hundred and
twenty-five and one hundred and fifty girls must be seated in the room.
Later she learned that the total enrollment was one hundred and sixty.
Just outside the dining room was a large bulletin board, impossible to
ignore or overlook. When they came out from luncheon a notice was posted
that Mrs. Eustice would address the school at two o'clock in the assembly
hall in the main building. It was now one-thirty.
"Let's go look at the gym," suggested Bobby. "We have time. Oh, how do
you do?"--this last was apparently jerked out of her.
"I didn't know you were coming to Shadyside, Bobby," said Ruth Gladys
Royal effusively. "Do you know my chum, Ada Nansen? She's from San
Francisco."
"Constance Howard is from the West, too--the Presidio," said Bobby.
Gracefully she introduced the others to Ada and Ruth who surveyed them
indifferently. The Littell girls they knew were wealthy and had a place
in Washington society, but the rest were not yet classified.
"Haven't I seen you before?" Ada languidly questioned Betty. "You're not
the little waitress--Oh, how stupid of me! I was thinking of a girl who
looked enough like you to be your sister."
Bobby bristled indignantly, but Betty struggled with laughter.
"I remember you," she said clearly. "You had the wrong seat on the train
from Oklahoma."
Ada Nansen glanced at her with positive dislike.
"I don't recall," she said icily. "However, I've traveled so much I
daresay many incidents slip my mind. Well, Gladys, let's go in and get
good seats. I want to hear Mrs. Eustice; they say she is a direct
descendant of Richard Carvel."
"We might as well go in, too," said Bobby disconsolately. "She's used up
so much time we couldn't do the gym justice."
Promptly at two o'clock, white-haired Mrs. Eustice mounted the platform
and tapped a little bell for silence.
The principal was a gracious woman of perhaps fifty. Her snow-white hair
was piled high on her head and her dark eyes were bright and keen.
Wonderful eyes they were, seeming to gaze straight into the youthful eyes
that stared back affectionately or curiously as the case might be. Mrs.
Eustice's gown was of black or very dark blue silk, made simply and
fitting exquisitely. Straight, soft collar and cuffs of dotted net
outlined the neck and wrists, and her single ornament was a tiny watch
worn on a black ribbon.
"I wish Ada Nansen would take a good look at her," muttered Bobby.
"I am so glad to welcome you, my girls," began Mrs. Eustice.
Betty thrilled to the magic of that modulated voice, low and yet clear
enough to be heard in every corner of the large room. Surely this lovely
woman could teach them the secret of cultivated, dignified and happy
young womanhood.
The principal spoke to them briefly of her ideals for them, explained the
few rigid rules of the school, and asked that all exercise tact and
patience for the first week during which the rough edges of new
schedules might reasonably be expected to wear off.
"I want to have a little personal talk with each one of you," she
concluded. "Your corridor teachers will consult with me and will tell you
when you are to come to me. And I hope you are to be very, very happy
here with us at Shadyside."
A soft clapping of hands followed this speech, and Mrs. Eustice stepped
down from the platform to be instantly surrounded by the girls who had
spent other terms at the school.
After the older girls had spoken to the principal, the newcomers began to
move forward. They were presented by their corridor teachers, who seemed
to possess a special faculty to remember names, and here and there Mrs.
Eustice recognized a girl through the association of ideas.
As Miss Lacey swept her girls forward, Ada Nansen and Ruth Gladys Royal
happened to head the ranks. Mrs. Eustice put out her hand to Ada, then
gazed down at her in evident astonishment.