"All aboard for the grand tour of inspection," Gladys announced.
School for the day was over. All through a confusing morning the twins
had been shown from one classroom to another where they had met their
teachers. There had been no attempt at lessons, but the girls had been
encouraged to talk and give their opinions on the different studies. As
a result of this, some shifting had been necessary. In English, one of
the new girls named Ethel Rivers had been dropped to the class below.
Because from her hasty remarks it was easy to see that she knew very
little of literature. She protested, but Miss Slocum stood firm. The
twins acquitted themselves well. They sat together and none of the
teachers could tell them apart, for they did not know about the tiny
crescent pin that Phyllis was faithfully wearing. But unlike Miss Baxter
at Miss Harding's school, the faculty at Hilltop rather enjoyed their
own confusion.
Now they were free for the day, and Sally with the able assistance of
Prue and Gladys was waiting to show the twins over the school and the
grounds.
"You've seen the classroom," Sally began, "and you know about the
assembly hall."
"Oh, Sally, if you're not going to do better than that I'm going to play
guide," Gladys protested. "The idea of calling a ballroom the assembly
hall! It loses all its romance."
"And besides, Miss Hull doesn't like it," Prue added.
"Why?" Phyllis inquired.
Sally waved her hand at Gladys as if she were introducing a speaker.
"You tell it, Glad, and then we'll be sure to be amused."
"I accept the nomination, and I will do my best for the people under my
care," Gladys said grandly.
"Well, do start with the explanation of the ball room," Janet begged.
"I'm so curious."
"That means the history of Hilltop, but I'll do my best," Gladys
replied, and began:
"Fifty years ago, Colonel Hull lived in this house. He had lots of money
and he lived like a king. He was famous throughout the countryside for
his wonderful hunting, but, if you just go on spending money and never
do anything to make it, it doesn't last forever, so when Colonel Hull
died and Miss Hull's father had the house, he found he didn't have any
money to run it with. So for a long time Miss Hull and her father and
mother lived in the old wing and were terribly poor.
"Then her parents died and the house was Miss Hull's, but still there
wasn't any money. All her friends wanted her to sell it, but she
wouldn't do it. There had been six generations of Hulls on this place,
and she wasn't going to let her ancestors up in heaven see her beaten by
a little thing like no money."
"Oh, Glad!" Sally and Prue protested.
"Well, she wasn't," Gladys persisted. "Maybe that's not a very elegant
way of putting it, but it's exactly as it was. She wouldn't admit she
was beaten, and, of course, she wasn't.
"She got together with some teachers that she knew and she started
Hilltop. She started with ten pupils, and now I wish you'd look at us.
We're the most wonderful school in the country."
Gladys finished as though she were closing a speech to the Senate.
"But what about the ballroom?" Janet insisted.
"I'm coming to that, if you have a little patience," Gladys told her.
"Miss Hull remembered her grandfather, and she remembered how he liked
to have the rooms called by their special name, so she goes on calling
them the same and so you see, instead of having lectures in an assembly
hall, like everybody else, we have them in a real ballroom, that's the
most beautiful room in the state.
"That's why we call it the ballroom still, and why we call the dining
room the hall, why Miss Hull's room is the boudoir instead of an office,
and why we have history in the library instead of a classroom. You see,
it gives us an advantage over other schools, makes Hilltop original
instead of an ordinary boarding school."
Gladys paused, and looked at her listeners for appreciation.
The twins sighed. "It's just wonderful!" Janet said.
"Why it makes you think you're living in the time of white wigs and
patches," Phyllis whispered, looking about her as though she expected to
see Colonel Hull walk through one of the heavy oak doors, ready for a
day with the hounds.
Janet's eyes held the look of dreamy speculation that had so often
filled them when she was reading old-world stories in her Enchanted
Kingdom.
Gladys had dropped her mocking tone as the story unfolded. The realest
love in her life was Hilltop, and she loved to talk about it. She saw
the look in the twins' eyes that she had hoped to see, and she smiled
contentedly.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, step this way if you please," she went on
with a return to her laughing manner. "We will now learn something of
the present history of the school. We are now in the old building and, I
might add, the only building to live in, but observe this green baize
door. It leads to what is commonly called the new wing."
She pushed it open with a contemptuous push, and they found themselves
in a spick-and-span corridor of white woodwork and gleaming mahogany
doors. In comparison to the old and stately paneled walls of the old
building it seemed new indeed.
Several girls that the twins recognized came out of one of the rooms and
stopped in mock surprise.
"Why, Gladys! Why, Prue! Why, Sally!" Louise Brown, a tall and lanky
girl, and one of their own classmates, exclaimed. "Is it possible that
you've come for a breath of fresh air to our light and sunny abode,
after the mouldy shadows of yours?" she asked, smiling sweetly.
Gladys sighed, but it was Sally who answered.
"No," she said in a bored tone, "we are simply showing Janet and Phyllis
what to avoid in the future."
The other girls laughed good-naturedly.
"That's one on you, Sally," Louise admitted, and one of the other girls
exclaimed:
"Long live the rivalry between the old and the new at Hilltop!"
"Well, anyway, now that you're here, come on into my room, I've got a
whale of a box of candy," little Kitty Joyce invited.
When they were all seated in her dainty room, Phyllis said, shyly:
"I wish somebody would explain to me about this rivalry; I don't
understand."
"I'll explain!" Louise jumped up and stood in the middle of the floor,
her hands behind her back.
"We are two distinct and separate wings," she began, "and we represent
the old and the new. For some reason that nobody will ever understand, a
spirit of rivalry started between the two years ago, when we were very
new. Now it is an established fact. We fight in games, in art and in
lessons for the glory of our wings, and even at the risk of being rude,"
she added with a little twinkle in her eye, "I'm going to state last
year our house won everything."
"Everything but archery, history, composition and dramatics," Prue
reminded her gravely.
"Oh, pouf!" Kitty laughed. "Those don't count. We won the tennis cup,
the running cup, the art prize, for sculpture and painting."
"That was last year," said Sally severely.
They munched the candy for a while in silence, and then Kitty said
slowly:
"Funny thing the way the wings feel about each other. Why, look at you,
Sally. You were awfully good friends with Alice Bard, and she was a new
wing girl...."
"Well, for that matter, take us here today," Louise put in. "We're
really the best of friends, and yet--"
"And yet there's a difference. It's rather like two brothers who go to
different colleges. They love each other, but they love their colleges
too."
"All very well," said Gladys, "but the truth of the matter is that both
wings enjoy the spirit of competition. It gives us something to think
about and work for."
"But you're so good-natured about it," Janet said wonderingly.
"Of course we are," Sally replied. "Whoever heard of two basketball
teams really disliking each other, and yet they'll fight tooth and nail
for a cup."
"A cup that they really don't want, either, except for what it stands
for," Gladys added with a little laugh.
Kitty threw up her two little hands in mock despair.
"Mercy on us. We are getting in deep. I vote we have some more
chocolates."
The girls returned to the candy box with renewed interest and for the
time being the subject of the wings was dropped, but not before the
twins had grasped the exact nature of the rivalry.