THE ENGLISH TEACHER
"Aren't they awfully nice?" cried Sadie, as the three girl chums rushed
about in a flurried effort to make themselves presentable for their
first meal at Laurel Hall.
"Lovely! But for goodness' sake, which one of you girls has my brush
and comb?" This from Nan as she looked frantically for something with
which to smooth her ruffled fair hair.
"I'd suggest you look in your grip," said Jo dryly, and received a
gloomy stare from her best friend.
"Idiot! Do you think I haven't?"
"Here it is." Sadie came pacifically into the breach, handing Nan her
lost articles.
"Where did you get 'em?" grumbled Nan, in no mood to be pacified.
"On the bed, where you put them yourself," retorted Sadie. "You don't
think I opened your old grip, do you?"
"Stop fighting!" This came from Jo as she dipped her face into a basin
of clear cold water and came up sputtering and rosy. "We have about
two minutes to get ready."
Thanks to the sociability of their new friends, they had no time to
change their dresses. But whisk brooms were brought forth, collars and
belts smoothed into place, and shoes rubbed with a cloth for want of
time to polish them.
This concession to respectability together with freshly washed faces
and smooth, shining hair wrought a pleasing change in the girls. When
the supper gong rang they looked as well groomed as though they had
just been freshly tubbed and had had a change of clothes from head to
foot.
Jessie Robinson was true to her promise and appeared at their door just
as the supper gong rang.
"Doris and Gladys are still primping," she explained, out of breath
with haste. "Miss Jane can't bear tardiness, so I told them I'd come on
without them. Are you ready?"
"All ready," said Jo, and added with exasperation: "Except Sade, who
seems to have gone back to the wash basin!"
"I found a smudge on the side of my nose," Sadie explained, rubbing the
offending spot vigorously as she hurried toward them. "Is it off now?"
anxiously.
"If it isn't, it won't be," replied Jo. "Come on!"
But Nan added reassuringly.
"All O. K., Sadie dear. You're as fresh as the flowers in June--or is
it May?"
Jessie led them through the hall and down the broad flight of stairs
that they had already twice ascended. They met other groups of girls
and mingled with them in a happy spirit of comradeship.
"Our first meal at Laurel Hall!" Sadie surreptitiously squeezed Jo's
hand as they neared a large door through which floated appetizing
odors. "Isn't it scrumptious?"
Jo only smiled in answer, for they had reached the dining hall.
"There's Miss Tully--the teacher in charge this week," Jessie said.
"She will assign you your places at table."
The three Woodford girls regarded Miss Tully with interest, as being
the first of the faculty, with the exception of Miss Romaine, whom they
had yet seen.
Miss Tully was of medium height. She was very thin, almost, the new
girls thought, the thinnest person they had ever seen. She wore her
hair drawn severely back from a severe brow and her gray eyes, small
and bright under level brows, carried out this general impression of
severity.
All in all, from the moment of looking at Miss Tully the three chums
found themselves in awe of her and avoided the glance of that
hard gray eye with dexterity. Miss Tully, while being an excellent
disciplinarian, was not popular with the girls of Laurel Hall nor with
the rest of the faculty.
"Gracious, I hope they're not all like her!" whispered Nan Harrison
irrepressibly, and was treated to a nudge by Jo.
"Keep still!" she whispered back. "Do you want her to put you in the
dungeon?"
Miss Tully was indeed glancing in their direction with a contraction of
her heavy brows that might have been disapproval. In this case it was
merely mental concentration, but the girls could not have been expected
to know that.
"Your names, young ladies?" asked the teacher, as Jessie drew her new
friends forward.
The girls introduced themselves and were relieved when that frown of
concentration turned from them to a slip Miss Tully held in her hand.
"You are at the third table," she told them finally. "Third, fourth,
and fifth seats from the foot. Show them their places, Jessie, if you
please," and she turned her attention to the next group of new girls
entering the room.
"Glory! You're at my table!" whispered Jessie, as she piloted the girls
down the long room. "And, even better than that, your seats are right
next to Doris and me!"
This was a very happy arrangement for the chums. They felt that,
instead of living for a certain period of time among strange girls with
whom they would have to become acquainted by degrees, they had fallen
into the hands of friends.
"You are making it mighty nice for us," Jo whispered, and Jessie
answered only with a bright smile.
The dining hall was a long narrow room with windows along one entire
side of it. Since the chums knew that Laurel Hall accommodated at the
least eighty students and at the most ninety, they were prepared for
the thought that the dining hall must be of a considerable size to seat
them all at meals.
Long, tables furnished the room, and at these almost all the girls of
Laurel Hall were already assembled.
Table three proved to be at the foot of the long room, but near the
cheerful bright stretch of windows. From these windows the view was
beautiful and even included a small portion of the lake.
The pleasure of the chums at being placed close to their new friends
was tempered by a discovery they made as they drew their chairs out
from the table. Directly opposite them, sat Kate Speed and her meek
little shadow, Lily Darrow!
"I had no idea that you were to sit at our table or I might have
warned you," Jessie whispered, noting Jo's glance of annoyance. "Never
mind, Kate can't bite at meals. Not with Miss Tully in charge!"
Kate Speed, who had been talking across a vacant place to a girl on her
side of the table, happened to look up at this moment.
She stared at the three girls who--most innocently--occupied the room
she coveted. She then caught the laughing, teasing gaze of Jessie
Robinson.
Kate stiffened and tossed her head with an air of haughty disdain.
Without deigning to recognize the presence of the girls with whom she
had been so effusively friendly on the train, she turned and began an
ostentatious conversation with quiet Lily Darrow.
Jo nudged Nan, who was sitting next to her.
"Cut--by cricky!" she chuckled, and then exchanged laughing glances
with Sadie, on the other side of Nan.
Meanwhile Jessie was glancing nervously over her shoulder. The two
vacant seats at the foot of the table belonged to Doris Maybel and
Gladys Holt. Neither of the girls had come in yet, although Miss Tully
had assigned the last new girl her seat and was about to take her own
place at the head of table one.
"I feel sorry for them if they're late," whispered Jessie in response
to Jo's question. "They ought to know better--with Tully in charge!"
At the moment there was a stir at the door and Jessie looked hopeful.
But it was only Miss Jane Romaine, come to have a word with the teacher
in charge.
Jessie's foot began to tap the floor--tap--tap--under the edge of the
table.
"There they are!" cried Nan suddenly, as two guilty heads poked in at
the door.