GREYCLIFF GIRLS
There were only thirty or forty girls at luncheon, although from the
excitement and noise of arrivals Cathalina had been sure that the Hall
was full. “Just wait till tonight,” said Lilian North, who accompanied
the girls to their door. “Then you’ll not be able to hear yourself think
in the dining room.”
Once more in the privacy of their own little apartment, Cathalina and
Hilary began to put on the finishing touches to arrangement of their
possessions and to think of coming duties. “Recitations begin tomorrow,”
said Hilary, “and we must find out about the rooms and teachers and
everything.”
“I’m simply frightened to death to think of it! How am I ever going to
get up and say anything before a roomful of girls and with a sharp-eyed
professor looking at me. My!”
Hilary looked at Cathalina in surprise. “Why should you mind so much?
Are you always that way?”
“‘Always,’—why, Hilary, I never went to school in my life before!”
“O,” Hilary was wondering and wanting to ask why and all about it.
“That is why,” Cathalina ran on, “my work is so irregular. I’m ahead in
some things and behind in others.”
“You have had private teachers, then?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to take?”
“First year Latin and Algebra and Senior Collegiate Literature,” replied
Cathalina, looking at a paper in her father’s handwriting to make sure.
“Papa thinks that I have had enough French and German, because I can
speak them and read the literature myself any time. He wants me to catch
up in Latin and Mathematics as soon as possible.”
“Well, you are mixed! You will recite with the infants in Latin and Math
and with the ‘young ladies’ in Literature. I’m a regular Junior Academy,
of course, because I’ve had two years of high school. But that makes you
only—five, ten, thirteen hours.”
“What are ‘hours’?”
“Hours of recitation, you know. Latin recites every day, so that’s five
hours a week,—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”
“I see; but why do you say ‘only’? My father said that if I had too much
work I could drop Literature.”
“Why, thirteen hours is _nothing_!”
“Well, if you had never been to school,” began Cathalina, looking almost
ready to cry, “you’d think it was enough.”
Hilary’s warm heart was sorry, though she had thought it rather “airy”
for Cathalina to mention speaking French and German. She spoke quickly,
“O, don’t feel bad, Cathalina, I did not mean to be horrid. I suppose
your father knows best. I certainly wish I could speak some foreign
languages. Let’s trade. If I get ‘stuck’ in French you help me, and if
you should have any trouble in algebra, maybe I can help you out.”
“All right, it’s a bargain!” and Cathalina stretched out a little hand
browned by the sun of the summer by the shore.
“Then there’ll be Gym, of course,” added Hilary.
“I’m excused from the gymnasium work and going to take swimming and
riding lessons. I learned to float this summer, was always too afraid to
try it before.”
“I’m going in for tennis and basketball. I’m crazy about basketball. But
come on, let’s go to the beach. I can almost hear those waves calling!”
“I hear you calling me!” sang Cathalina, as they started with no further
delay. If Mother Sylvia and Father Philip had seen their daughter as she
raced with Hilary down the bank to the beach, they surely would have
thought that a miracle had happened. Poor little Cathalina had needed
“somebody to play with”. She was breathless and sat on the sand with
color in her cheeks and panting from the exercise which hardly disturbed
sturdy Hilary. A few other girls were there, too, throwing pebbles into
the water, or wading out a short distance, or watching the gulls and
terns through field glasses. Out by the breakwater, the birds were
flying and fishing, sometimes coming quite near to rest on the posts by
the little dock further down the shore. There was the boathouse, locked
now; and fast to the dock was a handsome little launch, “Greycliff”
painted on her side.
“O-oo-oh!” exclaimed Hilary. “I just won’t want to study at all! Boats
and a launch!”
“Don’t worry!” said a fat little girl who was sitting on the sand not
far from Cathalina. “They only let us go on that at certain times.”
“I don’t care,” sang Hilary,—“I know I’ll be in it some time before I
die, anyhow! Do they let you go out in the boats?”
“Yes, according to rules. And we have canoeing on the river, too, and
races sometimes.”
“Where’s the river?”
“The other side of the grove from Greycliff Hall. Look along there and
you can see where it joins the lake.”
The two girls presently wandered off alone, along the beautiful beach,
until Hilary noticed that Cathalina was especially quiet, and that in
their explorations the afternoon had slipped away.
“Getting homesick? So’m I. We must be hungry. Come on; it’s a lucky
thing at school that meals come three times a day. Mother says that
school girls are always hungry.”
“If I’m homesick, therefore, I’m hungry? Maybe I am! Anyway let’s go and
see if any more girls have come. It seemed to me, Hilary, that some of
those children on the beach were too young even for the Academy. Do you
suppose they were visitors?”
“No; that was one thing _I_ didn’t know, and I thought I asked about
everything there was to know about Greycliff. They take a few very
special girls for the grades and have teachers for them. The catalogue
doesn’t say anything about it because, of course, they don’t go in for
that. How I know,—there was one on the train coming up and her older
sister and I talked. She said it began by not wanting to separate some
sisters, and so there may be, perhaps, a dozen little girls here. I’ve
been wishing my sister June could come. But I don’t suppose they could
spare us both and then there would be the money.”
Savory smells, with rattle of dishes and silver, announced to Cathalina
and Hilary, as they slipped in by the side entrance, having taken time
to walk through the grove, that dinner was not far off. Soon the gong
rang, and coming from different rooms, or running from various
directions on the campus, came girls tall or short, plump or slim; girls
rosy and girls pale; girls laughing and talking, with arms around old
chums, and girls who had just arrived and were depressed with the
strangeness of it all and their loneliness in the midst of so much good
comradeship. Smiling faces and sober ones; pretty summer dresses, or
traveling suits; feet neatly dressed in low shoes or high shoes; sashes,
belts; round necks, high necks; hair done high, hair done low, hair down
backs in braids, or curls, with bright ribbons,—an endless variety might
be seen among the buzzing company that poured in the dining room door
and stood behind the chairs at the tables. At a tap of Miss Randolph’s
bell, all were seated and remained silent when her strong, beautiful
voice asked a blessing. Then the hum began again.
“One couldn’t feel lonesome here,” remarked Hilary.
“I almost do,” replied Cathalina.
“Wait until you get started on the eats. I’m ’most starved.”
“Poor Hilary! O, I’m all right, but I had a pang thinking of Mother and
Father at home.”
“Don’t think,” advised Hilary.
“Just look around, Hilary!” Cathalina had been in many large hotels, but
this was different.
At the head of the central table was Miss Randolph, serene, used to all
the commotion, gracefully entertaining a few stranded parents, who were
gazing around with much interest.
Cathalina had fallen in with Lilian and Betty as they came in, and
seeing Eloise and Grace beckoning, all had gathered at the same table.
Regular places, of course, could not yet be assigned. As the tables
seated ten, only four people new to Cathalina and Hilary were to be
introduced. Miss Middleton, an instructor in piano, was at the head.
Very thin, tall and pleasant was she. Next was one of the “Senior C”
girls, whom Miss Middleton seemed to know well. Then came a very small
girl, Avalon Moore, who acknowledged the introductions shyly and looked
as if she wanted to escape. Cathalina, who sat next to Avalon, in
feeling sorry for her and trying to think of little things to relieve
her embarrassment, began to forget her own strangeness. The poor little
girl dropped her fork, upset a glass of water, and in trying to take
some gravy trailed a plentiful supply over the side of her plate on the
tablecloth. The whole table was sorry for her and she knew it, which
only made things worse.
But Eloise came to the rescue immediately with a question to the music
teacher of such general interest that everybody joined in the discussion
and allowed little Miss Moore to recover herself unnoticed. Cathalina
quietly began to talk to her about the school and the girls, mentioning
how lost and homesick she had felt that morning, but how beautiful the
place was and what nice girls she had met already. Avalon began to feel
quite natural and looked at the dainty Cathalina with such admiring eyes
that she was pleased; for among the relatives it was Cathalina who
looked up to the older girls, Ann Maria, Emily or Louise.
Another girl at the table aroused Cathalina’s interest. She had been
introduced as Evelyn Calvert and came from Kentucky. There was a little
difference between her speech and that of Helen Paget, who was also from
the South, Cathalina did not know from what part as yet. At first
Cathalina thought Evelyn affected, but held her decision for some future
time. Although Evelyn was probably no older than Cathalina, she had all
the airs and graces of an older girl and, indeed, real charm with it
all. Her long, dark lashes lifted or dropped, and smiles came and went
as she talked.
“Aunt Sue put huh hands on huh hips,” Evelyn was saying to the Senior C
girl across the table, “and said ‘Miss’ Ev’lyn, yo’ gettin’ maghty fat
an’ peart up Nawth, whut foh yo’ taken ridin’ lessons lak yo’ said?
Caint yo’ ride good nuff?’
“‘I just ride foh the fun of it, Aunt Sue,’ I told huh. She was actually
insulted to heah that I had been takin’ ridin’ lessons in the Nawth.
‘Why, chile,’ she said, ‘de Calv’ts is jus’ nachelly bawn to de
saddle!’”
While the table was waiting for dessert, Lilian entertained the new
girls by indicating in nods and glances the different girls of interest
or prominence. She, too, called their attention to the new instructor,
Patricia West, who sat at the next table and was chatting and laughing
with some of the older girls. “That is Daisy Palmer next to
Patricia,—that plump, red-haired girl with the sweet mouth. She is
president of Y. W. and a splendid girl. Everybody counts on her. That
tall girl with the white dress and blue sash is Julia Merton. She is a
Junior Academy and will be in your classes, Hilary. She is a German
shark.”
“What in the world is a ‘shark’?” asked Hilary. “That is something new
to me!”
“O, knows everything about it and takes the highest grades. The one in
pink is her roommate, Margaret Brown. Isn’t she pretty?—the one in pale
pink, with the real yellow hair. The other girl in pink is Dorothy
Appleton. See her? She is in your class, too.”
At a table near, Dorothy was leaning forward, slender wrists braced
against the edge of the table, while she talked earnestly to Julia
Merton opposite. Small, white teeth, regular features, strong for a girl
so young, and brilliant black eyes were much in evidence as she talked
or smiled. Had Cathalina realized the part some of these girls would
play in the drama of school life, she would have taken more pains to
observe them.
“The proud looking girl looking this way, there at the foot of the
second table over,—well, she was the captain of our Sophomore basketball
team last year, Madge Ross. She is out of athletics now, she says. She
can’t stand it to be beaten, has a high temper, is awfully blunt and
can’t keep a roommate very long. I guess some new girl is going to have
to stand it this year.”
Dessert over, a tap on the bell brought silence again, and Miss Randolph
rose to make a few announcements and read important notices. One was
passed to her as she stood there. There was little of the scene that
Hilary or Cathalina missed.
“Let me repeat the announcement that schedules of studies, hours of
recitation, rooms and teachers, will be found in the registrar’s office
on the first floor, and posted also in the corridors. Miss Farrell’s
office hours are posted at the door.
“Chapel will be held tomorrow morning at Randolph Hall, the building
next to this. All the young ladies,—pupils of any age—are expected to be
present.
“The Y. W. C. A. cabinet is asked to meet in the parlor immediately.
“I desire to meet all the new girls as soon as possible. You may come to
the library of this building, _not_ of Randolph.”
“I’m just limp!” Cathalina remarked as at nine o’clock she sat braiding
her locks for the night and wishing in the depths of her tired little
soul for Etta to come and get her ready for bed. “That poor little
Avalon Moore stuck to me as if I were her last friend. I loved to help
her, but I knew so little myself. You were a dear, Hilary, to take hold
and find her room and roommate for her.”
“O, I’m used to towing people around,” said Hilary, smiling broadly.
“You remember that I’m a minister’s daughter! We’ll get up early
tomorrow, won’t we? and write home. I’m too tired now, aren’t you?
Hasn’t it been a day of it?”
“Well, I think so! It seems a week since Papa left this morning. Can you
remember the name of all the girls we’ve met?”
“Mercy, no!” cried Hilary. “At this minute I can’t even remember the
name of the Pink Kimono next door!”
“That is because we called her that first, I suppose; Lilian,—Lilian,—”
“North,” announced Hilary in triumph. “But the lot of ’em we met after
dinner!”
“This is only the first day, remember.”
“But I can’t help feeling the way we do when we go to a new place, that
we must remember everybody.”
“Why?”
“O, people feel hurt, you know—that’s one of our jobs, to get
acquainted.”
“Our minister’s been in our church twenty-five years and almost belongs
to our family, we think. He married Mamma and Papa and baptized us
children, so we think everything of him and his wife, too.”
“Twenty-five years! We usually stay four or five years. I like to move
around, but Mother doesn’t. If she has a nice parsonage she would
certainly like the twenty-five year plan!”
Cathalina yawned, shook off her slippers and hopped into bed.
“I just set my new alarm clock for five o’clock, Cathalina; are you
game?”
“I am,” said Cathalina firmly, though never in her life had she risen at
the call of an alarm clock.
A faint sound of splashing waves on the lake shore came through the open
windows to the drowsy girls; while a soft breeze stirred the straying
locks about Cathalina’s contented face and brought happy dreams to
Hilary.