was awake, for out on her wide prairie every one was astir at early
dawn. She did not want to disturb her roommate, the haughty Geraldine
Barrington, and so she lay quietly gazing out of her window at the
tree-tops and the shining sky, but she saw neither, except vaguely, for
in fancy she was out on the prairie watching the sun rise, hearing the
morning call of the meadow-larks and orioles and bobolinks. Even the
harsh-voiced cowbirds and the thieving crows were there in her memoried
picture, for they all meant home to her. She could see her brother
Basil, the handsomest lad in all the world, she thought, as he swung
into his saddle and herded the cattle down by the river.
Her older brother, Cedric, she knew would be swinging along after the
plow with Shep bounding in front of the horses. Then, in imagination,
she looked into the kitchen. She was sure that the boys found it hard to
keep house without her. For a moment a rush of regret brought tears to
her eyes.
“Oh, how selfish I was to leave those dear brothers of mine with no one
to get supper for them when they come home so tired at night.”
The girl in the other bed had awakened and she heard a half-stifled sob
from Matilda’s corner. She curled her lips contemptuously. “Silly,
sniffly thing,” she said to herself. Then a bell rang, and they both
arose and dressed behind their sheltering screens. Geraldine Barrington
finished her toilet hastily and without one glance at the new pupil she
swept out of the room.
Matilda smiled to herself. This girl had not the power to hurt her.
Instead she thought happily of the kind friends whom she had met the day
before, and when she went out into the corridor, one of these hurried
forward to meet her. “Good-morning, Starr,” Gertrude called. “I hope
that you slept well.”
“I did indeed, thank you,” Matilda said brightly. “Gertrude, you know
the old saying, ‘The dream you dream in a strange bed will come to pass
some day.’”
“What was it?” Rosamond Wright asked as they joined the others at the
entrance to Apple-Blossom Alley.
“It would be utterly impossible to have this dream come true,” Starr
replied merrily, “for I dreamed that Geraldine Barrington begged me to
be her friend and roommate, while the truth of the matter is, she has
not even given me a kindly glance, so you see dreams go by contraries.”
While they were talking, the girls trooped down the broad front stairs.
The matron in the lower hall smiled a greeting to them. The girls
curtsied and chorused, “Good-morning, Madame Deriby.”
That good woman was pleased to see the Bishop’s protégée so differently
clad. She felt sure that one of the Sunnyside girls had loaned her a
uniform.
“I am glad that they are kind to poor Matilda,” she thought as she
turned into her office, “for I am almost certain that her unfortunate
roommate will not be.”
As soon as the door was closed, there came a rap upon it and when Madame
Deriby reopened it, she found an angry and indignant Geraldine
Barrington standing outside.
“Come in,” she said kindly, feeling almost sure that she knew what the
visitor had to say, nor was she wrong.
“Madame Deriby,” the girl began, “I wish to notify my father that I want
to be removed from this school at once. In England I was never called
upon to associate with any one in a class beneath me, and I certainly
shall not begin doing so now. What would my friends at Barrington Manor
think of me, if they knew that I was rooming with a girl named Matilda
Jane Perkins, who wears a plaid shawl for a coat, a beaver cap for a
hat, and thick woolly mittens instead of gloves. I had told you, Madame
Deriby, that I did not care to make the acquaintance of any one here. My
father pays my tuition, not to have me humiliated, but in order that I
may continue my education while he is obliged to be in the States.”
The matron listened gravely to this indignant torrent of words and when
the girl paused, she said not unkindly, “Be seated, Geraldine. I am
sorry that you have been so distressed, and if there were a single
unoccupied room in the school, I would gladly give it to you. It would
be impossible for me to communicate with your father for the next two
weeks, as he has informed me, and you, too, I believe, that he will be
traveling on the desert and will not expect mail for a fortnight.”
Geraldine tossed her head. “Well, if I am obliged to stay in this school
for that long, I at least will not sleep in the same room with a
farmer’s daughter.”
There was a sad expression in Madame Deriby’s grey eyes. For a moment
she was thoughtful and then she said: “There is a small room in the
cupola which is unoccupied. I will have it prepared and you may sleep
there to-night if you prefer.”
“I most certainly do prefer,” the girl replied as she rose and left the
office.
An hour later, when she returned to her room, planning to pack her trunk
preparatory to having it moved to the cupola, she found Matilda seated
in an easy-chair on her own side of the sunny bay-window. She held a pad
and pencil and was writing a letter to her far-away brothers. The
prairie girl heard the door open and some one enter, but, acting upon
the advice of her counselors, she did not glance up, but continued her
writing as though she were alone. Geraldine deliberately turned her back
toward her roommate. Matilda glanced at the flaxen head and there was a
sad expression in her wonderful eyes.
“Poor girl!” she thought. “How much happier she would be if she could
forget that she is a Barrington and realize that really we are all of us
just folks.”
At that moment there came a rap on the door and Peggy Pierce called,
“Starr, are you there? We want you to come to Apple-Blossom Alley.”
When Matilda was gone, Geraldine happened to glance at the writing-desk
on the other side of the room. There she saw a small red book which was
lying open as though it had recently been written in. The English girl
would have scorned any one else who would have done a thing so
dishonorable, but so great was her curiosity to know what this plebeian
girl could have written in her diary that she deliberately locked the
door and picking up the small book, she read: “March the 6th. Linden
Hall is such a wonderful place and many of the girls have been so kind,
especially Adele Doring and Gertrude Willis. My roommate, Geraldine
Barrington, is the most beautiful girl in the school, or at least she
would be if she had a pleasanter expression. She is very haughty and
proud and the girls say that is probably because she is English, and yet
my own dear mother was born in England and lived there until she was
seventeen and she was very kind to every one; but perhaps Mother did not
belong to the haughty class. I am certainly glad that she did not, for
they are not very pleasant to live with.”
Geraldine tossed her head as she thought: “Well, I certainly agree that
her mother did not belong to my class in England. I cannot imagine any
one who would marry a Perkins associating with the Barringtons. She
belonged to tradespeople or the serving class, no doubt. Perkins is the
name of my chum’s butler.”
A door down the corridor opened and voices were heard approaching.
Geraldine quickly closed the book and slipped it back into its place on
the desk.
She had just unlocked the door and seated herself when a flock of girls
trooped into the room. They pretended not to see her though of course
they did. She had whirled her chair about and her back was toward them.
“Oh, Starr, what a pretty room you have,” Peggy Pierce exclaimed as she
sat on the window-seat and heaped the sofa pillows back of her.
Geraldine flushed. Those were her very own pillows and she did not care
to have them crushed, but she wisely decided to say nothing.
“Sit down, every one,” Peggy called, “and let’s tell Starr all about the
rules of the school. It never would do to have her breaking them.”
The girls sat on the floor, tailor-fashion, and from their twinkling
eyes it could be plainly seen that a spirit of mischief possessed them.
“What would happen to me if I did break a rule?” Starr inquired.
Peggy lowered her voice to a stage whisper as she said, “Something
dreadful, I can assure you. You would be sent to the cupola room, and
there isn’t any one of us brave enough to stay there all night.”
Geraldine was of course listening, although she pretended to be reading.
She knew that they were talking about the very room which Madame Deriby
had said that she might occupy that night.
“Why wouldn’t one want to sleep there?” asked the innocent Starr.
“Because,” Peggy replied in a hollow whisper, “that room is haunted.
Some folks say they don’t believe in ghosts, but they’d better sleep in
the cupola for a few nights and see what they’ll see, and hear what
they’ll hear. Nina Best had it last and she told Madame Deriby she just
wouldn’t sleep there another night. I don’t know who is to have it
next.”
Peggy gave a mischievous sidelong glance at the back of Geraldine’s
head, but that girl pretended to be deeply interested in her book.
“Is there a story about the ghost?” Starr asked. “Tell it to us.”
Luckily Peggy had an active imagination.
“Yes,” she said in a hollow voice. “It was midnight when Nina was
awakened by the creaking of her door. She knew that she had locked it
before retiring. Frightened, she sat up and flashed on the light. There
was no one in the room and the door was closed and locked. Thinking that
it might have been her imagination, she tried to sleep and was just
dozing, when she heard stealthy, creeping steps coming across the floor.
Again she flashed on the light and again there was no one there.
“Nina then decided to leave the light burning for company. After a time,
as nothing had happened, she fell asleep, when suddenly she was awakened
by a low moaning sound, the light went out and in the darkness she could
see a white figure drifting toward her bed. She tried to move, but could
not, and then an icy cold hand was laid on her forehead.
“Nina says that she screamed so loud that in another moment Miss
Sharpleigh and Miss Merritt were at the door rapping to be let in. Nina
was a nervous wreck the next day and left school to recuperate. I surely
don’t envy the girl who is to have the cupola room next. For myself I
would prefer a flesh and blood roommate whoever she might be,” Peggy
concluded with a mischievous glance at Matilda.
Geraldine sprang up and taking her hat and coat she hurriedly left the
room.
“Well, I guess I scared her ladyship enough,” Peggy declared. “There
wasn’t a word of truth in what I was saying. I just made it up as I went
along.”
“Poor Geraldine!” Matilda laughed. “Now she will have to choose between
a farmer’s daughter and a ghost.”
Just then a bell rang and Peggy leaped to her feet, declaring that it
was her practice hour, and the other girls went with her.
When Matilda was alone, she stood for a moment looking out of the
window. She saw a little wood in a shimmer of spring green down the
hillside, and, since she had always lived on a prairie, she longed to
know what a wood looked like.
“If only I had a hat and coat like other people,” she thought, “I would
take a walk by myself.” Then she added wisely, “The girls, whose
friendship is worth having, do not care what I wear, and moreover, every
one is busy at this hour, and no one will notice me.” So thinking, she
took her plaid shawl from the closet and twined it about her head and
shoulders. Then she started out. She met no one in the corridors or
garden and soon she reached the edge of the little wood. She stood for a
moment looking about her truly awed. She had been brought up on a
treeless prairie and this was the first time in her fifteen years that
she had entered a wood. There was a shimmer of pale green on the twigs
that would soon be in full leaf. The ground was moist and ferns were
beginning to uncurl. A warm breeze wafted to Matilda an exquisite
fragrance. Her wonderful eyes brightened. Surely there must be some wild
flower in blossom, she thought, and eagerly she went deeper into the
wood to find it. The hill became steeper and in places it was rocky.
Again that exquisite fragrance and she paused to breathe deep of it.
Then it was that she spied something pink among the dry, brown leaves.
Stooping, she found that loveliest of spring flowers, a clump of
trailing arbutus.
“Oh, you sweet, sweet thing,” she whispered as she held the blossoms
close. “How I wish that I might find a spray for each of the girls who
have been so kind to me.” She continued her search, looking under the
leaves. She was nearing a heap of rocks, when from the other side came a
low moaning sound. Matilda stood very still and listened. Fear was
unknown to this prairie girl, but for one fleeting second she recalled
the story of Peggy’s ghost. Then, when the sound was repeated, she
hurried in that direction. Beyond a clump of bushes was the figure of a
girl lying on the ground. Matilda saw that it was Geraldine Barrington.
Forgetting everything but her desire to help, she hurried to the side of
her roommate.
“Oh, Miss Barrington,” she exclaimed, “you have hurt your ankle, haven’t
you? Let me get you into a more comfortable position and then I will run
back to the school for assistance.”
“I don’t want to go back to the school,” Geraldine declared angrily. “I
have left that place forever. I was just on my way to the Linden Station
when I slipped and wrenched my ankle. I was going to Buffalo on the next
train and have Madame Deriby send my things.”
“And all because you do not want to be my roommate,” Matilda said
sorrowfully. Then she added brightly, “I’ll tell you what, Miss
Barrington, let me help you back to the school and then I will ask
Madame Deriby to permit me to move into the cupola and you shall have
your room again all by yourself.”
Geraldine looked up in surprise. She endeavored to rise but fell back
with a groan. “Do lie still,” Matilda urged. “I’ll run down to the road.
I see a farmer driving this way and I am sure that he will help us.”
[Illustration: Beyond was the figure of a young girl lying on the
ground]
It proved to be kind Mr. O’Rourke on his way to the seminary with the
weekly supply of eggs and butter, and with his help Geraldine was
carried to the wagon and made comfortable on the straw. Half an hour
later, just as the girls were flocking out of the study hall, they were
amazed to see no less a personage than Geraldine Barrington being helped
into the school by a farmer and her hated roommate, Matilda Perkins, but
the girls of Linden Hall were to hear of something much more surprising
before the fortnight was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A DREAM THAT CAME TRUE
The resident nurse took charge of the case and Geraldine’s ankle, which
had been badly sprained, was carefully bandaged. When the pain had
subsided, the girl fell into a light slumber and the nurse slipped away.
Half an hour later Matilda stole into the room. She placed her exquisite
spray of arbutus in a vase near Geraldine’s bed, then she tiptoed over
to her own side, and began to pack her belongings. Though she was very
quiet, Geraldine, who was only drowsing, opened her eyes and the first
thing that she saw was the arbutus. She well knew who had placed it
there. The screen was in front of her bed so that she could not see
Matilda, but she heard her tiptoeing about. She wondered what she could
be doing. She was soon to learn, for in another moment she saw the
prairie girl going toward the door carrying all of her belongings. For
the first time in her pampered life, Geraldine realized how selfish she
had been.
“Miss Perkins,” she heard herself saying. “Please don’t move to-day.”
In surprise Matilda placed her suit-case on the floor and went to the
bedside. “But I thought that you wanted to leave the school because I
was your roommate. I am only a farmer’s daughter and of course you would
not care to associate with me.”
“Yes, I do,” Geraldine declared, and there was a strange ring of
sincerity in her voice. “I want to associate with you more than with any
one else in the school.”
“Then I will stay a few days longer,” Matilda said quietly, “but when
you are well perhaps you will feel as you did before. Just tell me so,
won’t you, and I will gladly move.”
Turning back, she unpacked her suit-case and rehung the plaid shawl and
beaver cap in the closet. Geraldine was amazed that any one could be so
unselfish, but a sudden twinge in her ankle kept her from replying.
That afternoon another girl in the school became ill and the nurse was
obliged to spend nearly all of the time in the infirmary, and so Matilda
asked permission to take care of Geraldine. “I love to play nurse,” she
said. “Mother was ill a long time and so I know just how, and since I am
not to begin my classes until the spring examinations are over, I shall
be glad to have something to do.”
Madame Deriby granted the permission and for several days Geraldine’s
pillow was smoothed and her tray brought up by her kindly roommate.
One day Geraldine was able to sit up for a while and Matilda wrapped her
in the warm plaid shawl and then sat in the sunny window to read to her.
The story was interesting, but Geraldine was not listening. She was
thinking of something that she had wanted to say to Matilda for the past
week, but her pride had prevented. At last she exclaimed, “Matilda, will
you stop a moment if you have reached the end of a chapter? There is
something that I want to say.”
The other girl glanced up inquiringly.
“I want to ask your forgiveness for several things,” the English girl
began. “First of all, please don’t move to the cupola, for I want you to
be my roommate as long as I am in this school. I have always been
lonely,” she added, “and how I have wished that I had a sister or even a
girl cousin, but I had none. Mother died when I was a baby and Dad tried
to be mother and sister to me, but he had to be away so much, and I have
lived nearly all of my life in French and English boarding-schools. We
were poorer at first because Dad was only a younger brother, but last
year his older brother died and left us the Barrington estate. I was so
delighted because I thought that we would settle down in that beautiful
place and have a home at last, but Father could not be happy, he said,
until he had found a sister of his who long ago came to America. If she
was still living, he wanted to share his fortune with her. She had
always been so loving to him, he told me, but she married some one
beneath her and the older brother had disowned her. They knew that she
came to the States with her husband, but she was never heard from
again.
“We lived in our castle-like home for a month, then Dad packed up and
said that he must come to America and try to find his lost sister. So we
came. Dad put me in this boarding-school while he travels about looking
for my aunt. He is away out in the Middle West now. In his last letter
he wrote that this country is wonderful; he had never dreamed it was so
big. He hasn’t found a trace of his lost sister, however, and so he will
be back in a fortnight, then, how happy I shall be, for we shall go back
to that wonderful Barrington Manor, and yet, Starr, I feel sure that I
am going to be lonely. There will just be Daddy and me in that great
rambling old castle, that is no one except the servants. I wish that I
could take you back with me to be my adopted sister.”
Matilda smiled into the beautiful face of her roommate as she replied,
“I’m glad that you like me, Geraldine, but I love my prairie home as
much as you do your English home and I couldn’t let the ocean separate
me from my splendid brothers.”
“Well, then go on with the story,” Geraldine said, and Matilda continued
reading, feeling happier than she had since she came to Linden Hall
Seminary.
Two weeks passed and Geraldine Barrington was able to walk about, but
she was never content unless Matilda, whom she now called Starr, was her
constant companion.
“Father is coming to-day,” Geraldine announced happily one morning as
she entered their room holding an open letter. “He is so disappointed!
He writes that he has visited every part of the West, but he has been
unable to find his sister. He will be here this morning and I’m to ride
down in the bus to meet him. I asked Madame Deriby if you might
accompany me but she said that since you are just beginning your
classes, she did not like to have you miss even one recitation, but I
want you to get acquainted with him when we come back to the school.”
“I would like to meet your father,” Matilda replied. “I am ever so glad
for your sake that he is coming.” Then taking her books, she went to her
classes.
At noon Geraldine danced into their room as she exclaimed, “Dad is here,
Starr, and—oh, we’ve had so much to talk about. He and I are to have
lunch together in the private dining-room and Madame Deriby said that
right after that you may come and meet him.”
When the hour arrived, Matilda followed Geraldine into the large parlor
and a gentleman arose to greet them.
“Dad, this is Starr, my roommate!” Geraldine exclaimed happily, and
Matilda found it hard to realize that this was the haughty girl who had
at first refused to speak to her.
“My daughter tells me that you live in the wonderful West,” Mr.
Barrington said kindly when the three were seated. “Dakota is the one
State, however, that I did not visit on my quest. All that I could see
was a vast prairie and I was sure that my sister, brought up with every
luxury, would not be content to live there.”
Matilda flashed a smile at the speaker. “Oh, Mr. Barrington,” she
exclaimed, “I love the prairie! I wouldn’t exchange it for all the
terraces and gardens of the world.” Then, fearing that she had been
rude, she added, “My mother was born in England and she has often told
me about the wonderful lawns and gardens about the home of her
childhood. She lived at a place called Ivondale.”
“Ivondale!” the man repeated in amazement. “What was your mother’s name,
Matilda, before she was married?”
“It was Margaret Inslay. I was named after Father’s mother.”
The gentleman caught both of her hands in his and his face glowed with
excitement. “Then your mother must have been my sister!” he declared.
“Our name was Inslay at that time, but after we inherited our
grandfather’s estate, we used the name Inslay-Barrington.”
The news spread through the school like wild-fire and Adele Doring drew
Matilda into Apple-Blossom Alley as she exclaimed, “So you were a
Cinderella all the time, you dear beautiful girl. I’m glad that I loved
you in the very beginning, however, or you might think that I was
hugging you now just because your ancestor’s name was Inslay-Barrington,
with a hyphen in it.”
Starr laughed happily. “Adele,” she whispered, “I would rather be the
daughter of my own dear farmer daddy than a princess. Geraldine’s father
has gone to Dakota. He is so eager to see my wonderful brothers. I am
hoping that you will meet them some day, Della.” Then she exclaimed
joyously, “Do you suppose that sometime your mother would permit you to
visit me?”
“I’m sure of it,” Adele replied happily, “and I want you to visit me
this summer before you return to the West.”
The girls little dreamed of the delightful something that was to happen
for all of them during the long vacation which was rapidly approaching.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE C. E. P.
“Oh, girls, you never could guess what’s going to happen?” Adele Doring
called as she whirled into the corner room where she found all of her
friends from Sunnyside busy with their week’s mending.
“It must be something powerful exciting,” Rosamond Wright drawled as she
dropped an ivory ball into the toe of her stocking, where a hole awaited
darning.
“I know what I wish was going to happen,” little Betty Burd chimed in.
“I wish Madame Deriby would say that we need not have final exams. It
would be heaps pleasanter to be promoted without them.”
“Girls, do let Adele tell us about it,” Carol Lorens called. “I know by
her shining eyes that it is something ever so nice.”
Adele sank down in the cushiony window-seat and looked around with a
provokingly merry smile. She liked nothing better than to mystify her
friends. “You may have three guesses,” she said.
“Tell us what letter it begins with,” Peggy Pierce suggested as she
fitted a patch carefully on her laboratory apron where a hole had been
burned during an experiment.
“Oh, um—let me see, it might begin with several letters,” Adele said.
“Well, I’ll choose three, since there are three words in its name, and
they are C. E. P.”
“C stands for circus,” chanted the irrepressible Betty Burd.
“Well, this C doesn’t,” Adele told her. “Starr looks as though she were
about to see the light.”
“Closing exercises are only two weeks away,” that maiden replied as she
sat thinking hard with threaded needle suspended in air. “Oh, I do
believe that I have it! Might it not be a closing-exercise party?”