A FAMOUS INTRODUCTION
The girls crowded into the dining hall from all directions. Nan and Bess
were told that there were many who had not yet arrived; but to the two
strangers from Tillbury it seemed as though there was a great throng.
The curious glances flung at Nan and her chum confused them, the buzz of
conversation added to their embarrassment, and had it not been for the
red-haired girl, Laura Polk, they would have been tempted to turn and
flee. They were quickly shown to seats, however, at a table where every
seat was filled with laughing, chattering girls. As the school was not
yet fully organized for work, there was no person in authority to take
the head of the table. Nan and Bess were glad to note that their
acquaintance, the red-haired girl, was with them. Bess was under the
embarrassing necessity of holding the lunch box in her lap.
"Hullo, Laura!" whispered one mischievous girl from across the table. "I
thought you were going to have your hair dyed this vacation?"
"So I did," declared Miss Polk gravely.
"Well! I must say it didn't seem to do it any good," was the next
observation.
"That's just it," said the serious, red-haired girl. "The dye didn't
take."
"I really do wonder, Laura," said another of her schoolmates, "how your
hair ever came to be such a very reddish red."
"I had scarlet fever when I was very young," said Miss Polk, promptly,
"and it settled in my hair."
The smothered laughter over this had scarcely subsided when another girl
asked: "Say, Polk! what's your new chum, there, got in her lap?"
This pointed question was aimed at Bess, who blushed furiously. Laura
remained as grave as a judge, and explained:
"Why, it's her lunch. She seems to be afraid she won't get supper enough
here and has brought reinforcements."
The laughter that went up at this sally drew the attention of many
sitting near to that table. Bess Harley's eyes filled with angry tears.
She saw that the red-haired girl had set a trap for her, and she had
walked right into it.
Bess really had feared she would not have supper enough. Having refused
to eat out of the lunch box on the train, her appetite had now begun
unmistakably to manifest itself. If the usual supper served the pupils
of Lakeview Hall was as scanty as Laura Polk had intimated, the remains
of the lunch Bess' mother had bought for the two chums in Chicago would
be very welcome indeed.
A glance around the table, however, soon assured even unobservant Bess
that the red-haired girl was letting her tongue run idly when she
criticised the food served. There were heaps of bread and biscuit,
plenty of golden butter, and a pitcher of milk that had _not_ been twice
skimmed, beside each plate. Besides, there were apple sauce and sliced
peaches and cold meat in abundance. The supper was plain, but plentiful
enough, considering that Dr. Prescott believed in giving her girls their
hearty meal at noon.
Nan had at once suspected that Laura Polk was joking. But, even she had
not appreciated the fact that the red-haired girl was deliberately
laying a trap for them until the subject of the lunch box was brought
up. Nan whispered quickly to Bess:
"Laugh! laugh! Laugh with them, instead of letting them laugh at you!"
But Bess could not do that. She was very angry. And as soon as these
fun-loving girls saw she had lost her temper, they kept the joke up.
Bess angrily allowed the lunch box to fall to the floor under the table.
But, as the meal progressed, gradually almost every dish on the table
gravitated toward Bess' plate.
"Want any more of your apple sauce, Cora?" the question would be
raised, quite gravely. "No? Well do pass it this way, we're hungry over
here," and the half-eaten apple sauce would appear at Bess Harley's
elbow.
Her plate was soon ringed about with pitchers of milk, half-empty butter
plates, broken biscuits, dabs of peaches and apple sauce in
lonely-looking saucers. Nan was almost choked with a desire to laugh;
and yet she was sorry for her chum, too. If Bess had only been able to
take the joke in good part!
"Don't show that you are so disturbed by their fun," begged Nan of her
friend.
"Fun! I'll write my mother and have her take me away from here,"
muttered Bess, in a rage. "Why, these girls are all _beasts_!"
"Hush, honey! don't make it worse than it already is," advised sensible
Nan. "The madder you get the more they will enjoy teasing you."
A rather severe and plainly dressed woman, wearing spectacles, who had
been walking about among the tables, now came to the one where Nan and
Bess were seated. She looked somewhat suspiciously at the dishes pushed
so close to Bess Harley's plate; but all the girls at the table were as
sober as they could be.
"Dr. Prescott tells me you are the two girls from Tillbury," she said to
Nan.
"Yes," was the reply. "My friend is Bess Harley and I am Nan Sherwood."
"We are glad to have you with us, and you have been assigned to Number
Seven, Corridor Four. Your trunks will be unpacked in the trunk room in
the basement to-morrow." Then she flashed another glance at the array of
dishes before Bess.
"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded.
"I--I----," Bess stammered, and some of the girls gave suppressed
giggles.
Laura Polk soberly came to her rescue--or appeared to.
"This is her birthday, and all the girls have been giving her presents.
At least, that is the way I understand it."
Irrepressible laughter broke out around the table. Even Mrs. Cupp smiled
grimly.
"I fancy you started the birthday presentation, Laura," she said. "Let
us have no more of it."
When she had passed along Laura Polk leaned forward to whisper shrilly
across Nan to Bess:
"Have a care, Bess! I think Mrs. Cupp suspects you. Don't try to smuggle
any of that apple sauce up to Room Seven, Corridor Four, in your
stocking!"
Of course this was all very ridiculous, and, taken in the right spirit,
the introduction of Nan Sherwood's chum to Lakeview Hall, would not have
been so bad. This was really a mild initiation to the fraternal
companionship of a lot of gay, fun-loving girls.
But Bess had a high sense of her own dignity. At home, in Tillbury,
because her father was an influential man, and her family of some local
importance, nobody had ever treated her in this way. To be an object of
the ridicule of strangers is a hard trial at best. Just then, to Bess'
mind, it seemed as though her whole school life at Lakeview Hall must be
spoiled by this opening incident.
Nan felt for her friend, for she well knew how sensitive Bess was. But
she knew this was all in fun. She could not help but be amused by the
red-haired girl's jokes. There wasn't a scrap of harm in anything the
exuberant one did or said. There was no meanness in Laura Polk. She was
not like Linda Riggs.
Had it not been for Nan, Bess would never have found her way to Room
Seven, Corridor Four, she was so blinded with angry tears. The room they
were to occupy together was up two flights of broad stairs, and had a
wide window overlooking the lake. Nan knew this to be the fact at once,
for she went to the open window, heard the soughing of the uneasy waves
on the pebbly beach far below, and saw the red, winking eye of the
lighthouse at the mouth of Freeling Inlet.
"This is a lovely room, Bess," she declared, as she snapped on the
electric light.
Bess banged the door viciously. "I don't care how nice it is! I sha'n't
stay here!" she cried.
"Oh, pshaw, Bess! you don't mean that," returned Nan.
"Yes, I do--so now! I won't remain to be insulted by these girls! My
mother won't want me to. I shall write her----"
"You _wouldn't_?" cried Nan, in horror.
"Why wouldn't I?"
"You don't mean to say you would trouble and worry your mother about
such a thing, just as soon as you get here?"
"We--ell!"
"I wouldn't do that for anything," Nan urged. "And, besides, I don't
think the girls meant any real harm."
"That homely, red-headed Polk girl is just as mean as she can be!"
"But she has to take jokes herself about her red hair."
"I don't care!" grumbled Bess. "She has no right to play such mean
tricks on _me_. Why did she tell me to take that horrid old lunch box in
to supper?"
"Because she foresaw just what would happen," chuckled Nan.
"Oh! you can laugh!" cried Bess.
"We should not have been so gullible," Nan declared. "That was a
perfectly ridiculous story Laura told us about the food being so poor
and scanty, and we should not have believed it."
Bess was staring at her with angry sparks in her eyes. She suddenly
burst out with:
"That old lunch box! If it hadn't been for you, Nan Sherwood, we would
not have brought it here with us."
"Why----Is that quite right, Bess?" gently suggested Nan.
"Yes, it is!" snapped her chum. "If you had taken my advice you would
have flung it out of the window and eaten in the dining car in a proper
manner."
There were a good many retorts Nan might have made. She wanted to laugh,
too. It did seem so ridiculous for Bess to carry on so over a silly
joke. She was making a mountain out of a molehill.
But it would be worse than useless to argue the point, and to laugh
would surely make her chum more bitter--perhaps open a real breach
between them that not even time could heal.
So Nan, in her own inimitable, loving way, put both arms suddenly about
Bess and kissed her. "I'm awfully sorry, dear; forgive me," she said,
just as though the fault was all hers.
Bess broke down and wet Nan's shoulder with her angry tears. But they
were a relief. She sobbed out at last:
"I hope I'll never, _never_ see a shoe-box lunch again! I just do----"
To interrupt her came a solemn summons on the door of Number
Seven--_rap, rap, rap!_ The two newcomers to Lakeview Hall looked at
each other, startled.