NEW FRIENDS
Naturally, no real work was done on opening day. Miss Woodhull, stately
and austere sat in her office directing her staff with the air of an
empress. One of the old girls declared that all she lacked was a crown
and sceptre, and the new ones who entered that office to be registered,
"tagged" the above mentioned girl called it, came out of it feeling at
least three inches shorter than when they entered. During her reign in
Leslie Manor, Miss Woodhull had grown much stouter and one seeing her
upon this opening day would scarcely have recognized in her the slender,
hollow-eyed worn-out woman who had opened its doors to the budding
girlhood of the land nearly thirty years before. She was now a
well-rounded, stately woman who carried herself with an air of owning the
state of her adoption, and looked comparatively younger in her
fifty-eighth year than she had in her twenty-eighth.
As Beverly sat in her nook watching the little girls of the primary
grades run out to their playground at the rear of the building, the old
girls of the upper classes pair off and stroll away through the extensive
grounds, and the new ones drift thither and yonder like rudderless craft,
she saw two girls come from Miss Woodhull's office. One was a trifle
shorter than Beverly and plump as a woodcock. She was not pretty but
piquant, with a pair of hazel eyes that crinkled at the corners, a saucy
pug nose, a mouth like a Cupid's bow and a mop of the curliest red-brown
hair Beverly had ever seen. Her companion was tall, slight, graceful,
distinguished. A little aristocrat from the top of her raven black hair
to the tips of her daintily shod feet was Aileen Norman and though only
sixteen, she was the one girl in the school who could hold Miss Woodhull
within the limits of absolute courtesy under _all_ circumstances.
Although descended from New England's finest stock, Miss Woodhull also
possessed her full share of the New Englander's nervous irritability
which all the good breeding and discipline ever brought to bear can never
wholly eradicate. Her sarcasm and irony had caused more than one girl's
cheeks to grow crimson and her blood to boil under their stinging
injustice, for Miss Woodhull did not invariably get to the root of
things. She was a trifle superior to minor details. But Aileen possessed
an armor to combat just such a temperament and her companion, Sally
Conant's wits were sharp enough to get out of most of the scrapes into
which she led her friend. So the pair were a very fair foil to each other
and a match for Miss Woodhull. What their ability would prove augmented
by Beverly's characteristics we will learn later.
As they came down the steps from Miss Woodhull's office, said office,
by-the-by, being in the wing in which the recitation rooms were situated
and quite separate from the main building, Sally's eyes were snapping,
and her head wagging ominously; Aileen's cheeks were even a deeper tint
than they ordinarily were, and her head was held a little higher.
Evidently something of a disturbing nature had taken place. They did not
see Beverly in her bosky nook and she did not feel called upon to reveal
herself to them.
"It was all very well to stick _three_ of us together when we were
freshmen and sophomores, but juniors deserve _some_ consideration I
think. If Peggy Westfield had come back this year it would have been all
well and good, but to put a perfect stranger in that room is a pure and
simple outrage. Why we haven't even an idea what she's like, or whether
she'll be congenial, or nice, or--or--anything. Why couldn't she have
given us one of the girls we know?" stormed Sally.
"Because she likes to prove that she is great and we are small, I dare
say," answered Aileen. "Of course the new girl may be perfectly lovely
and maybe we'll get to like her a lot, but it's the _principle_ of the
thing which enrages me. It seems to me we might have some voice in the
choice of a room-mate after being in the school three years. There are a
dozen in our class from which we could choose the third girl if we've got
to have her, though I don't see why just you and I couldn't have a suite
to ourselves. Mercy knows there are enough rooms in our wing and next
year we'll have to be in the main house anyway, and I just loathe the
thought of it too."
"Ugh! So do I! But let's reconnoiter and try to spot our bugbear. I
wonder if it wouldn't be appropriate to call her by another name? We've
got to share our _rooms_ with her even if we haven't got to share our
bed. Why didn't the Empress tell us her name? the stubborn old thing!
Just 'a girl from Sprucy Branch will share your suite this year. She
arrived last evening and has already arranged her things in A of Suite
10.' A of course! The very nicest of the three bedrooms opening out of
that study and the only one which has sunshine all day long. You or I
should have had it. I don't call it fair. She's probably trying to make a
good impression upon Miss Sprucy Branch. The name sounds sort of
Japanesy, doesn't it? Wonder if she looks like a Jap too?"
"Well if you are speaking of me I can tell you right now that Miss
Woodhull hasn't succeeded in making any _too_ pleasing an impression upon
Miss Sprucy Branch and so far as keeping Room A in suite 10, is
concerned, either of you is welcome to it, because it would take just
mighty little to make me beat it for the stables, mount Apache, habit or
no habit, and do those thirty-five miles between this luck-forsaken place
and Woodbine in just about four hours, and that is allowing something for
the mountains too. Apache's equal to a good deal better time, but I
should hate to push him, when we were heading toward _home_. That would
pay up for any amount of delay. Thus far I haven't found Leslie Manor as
hospitable as our servant's quarters at Woodbine."
Beverly's cheeks were as red as Aileen's, and her eyes snapping as
menacingly as Sally's by the time she had come to the end of her very
deliberately uttered speech, though she had not moved a hair's breadth
upon her bench, nor had she changed her position. Her head was propped
upon her hand as her arm rested upon the back of the seat, but she was
looking straight at the astonished girls as she spoke.
Never had there been a more complete ambush sprung upon a reconnoitering
party, and for a moment both girls were speechless. It was Sally who
saved the day by springing away from Aileen and landing upon the seat
beside Beverly as she cried:
"Are _you_ to be our room-mate?"
"I don't know, I'm sure. I've got to be _somebody's_ I suppose and I've
been assigned A 10. And from your conversation, which I couldn't very
well help overhearing, you two seem to have been assigned B and C for
study 10. But I've just given vent to my point of view."
There was still a good bit of electricity in the atmosphere, but it must
be admitted that for the past eighteen hours Beverly had been pretty
steadily brushed the wrong way, and it was an entirely new experience for
her. Add to this a good dose of homesickness and a sense of utter loss at
her separation from Athol, and her present frame of mind is not difficult
to understand.
"Are you Beverly _Ashby_ of Woodbine?" persisted Sally, while Aileen
dropped down upon the seat beside Sally to listen.
"Yes," was the laconic if uncompromising reply.
"Well that's the best news I've heard since I left Richmond, and I'm just
tickled nearly to death!" exclaimed Sally, spinning about to hug Aileen
rapturously. This sudden change of base was so astonishing that Beverly's
sense of humor came to her rescue and she laughed.
Sally again pivoted toward her crying:
"Why I know you perfectly well! I've known you all my life! And you know
me just as well as I know you. Don't you know you do?"
"Not so that it overwhelms me," laughed Beverly.
"Where did you meet Miss Ashby?" asked Aileen who felt it was about time
she came in for this wholesale discovery of "auld acquaintance."
"Oh, I beg your pardon. This is Aileen Norman, the third girl for suite
10. She's from Charlottesville and ought to know your family too. I
reckon you know hers. Everybody does. Just like they know yours. Why your
mother and mine went to Catonsville to school together. Didn't you know
that? She was Sarah Wirt then. Why I think it's too lovely for words! And
we were just as mad as fury when we started out to hunt up the new girl
we had to room with this year and here you aren't a new girl at all but
one we've always known. Why I'm so tickled I'm foolish. Hug me Aileen or
it will all seem like a dream and I'll wake up and find we've got to
roost with someone like that stupid Electra Sanderson, or Petty Gordon,
who can't do a thing but talk about that midshipman at Annapolis to whom
she says she's engaged, and she's only just seventeen. She makes me
tired."
"I hope you'll forgive us for all we said as we came down the walk. We
certainly had no personal feeling as you must understand, but we were
pretty well stirred up over the idea of having to begin junior year with
someone we didn't know after having had the same room-mate for three
years," explained Aileen diplomatically, striving to pour a drop or two
of oil upon perturbed waters.
"I couldn't very well feel any resentment toward you or Miss Conant when
I didn't know either of you from Eve, and I'm sorry if I seemed to. The
truth is I was lonely and homesick and just ready to light into anybody.
Is Miss Woodhull always so high and mighty, and Miss Baylis so like an
iceberg?"
"Mercy, did you fall into her clutches the first jump? She's the limit!
Oh, Miss Woodhull's so deadly afraid she won't uphold the dignity of dear
Bosting and her Massy Alma Mater that she almost dies under the burden,
but thank goodness, we don't see much of her, and Miss Baylis is _such_ a
fool we laugh behind her back. She's trying to make herself solid with
the Empress because she thinks she will succeed to her honors when the
high and mighty lady retires. But she's harmless because all her airs and
graces are veneer. Give her one good scratch some day and you'll see how
thin the veneer really is. But come on up to No. 10, and let's get
settled. Neither Aileen nor I had any heart to do a thing until we found
out who had been popped into A. Cricky, but I'm glad it's _you_," and
slipping her arm through Beverly's right one while Aileen took possession
of the left, all three hurried toward the house, Sally announcing:
"We'll introduce you to all the nice girls and we'll call ourselves the
"Three Mousquetaires." There may not be any such word, but that doesn't
matter in the least: It's Frenchy and I _love_ French. And besides, we
mean to band together to fight for our rights and down oppression,"
asserted this young Jacobin, as arm in arm all three made their way to
the pretty suite allotted to them on the second floor of the wing, for
Beverly had entered Leslie Manor as a junior, her previous work under
Norman Lee having well fitted her to do so.