"THE OLD GIRLS' WELCOME TO THE NEW"
AS Betty opened the door, she ran into Kitty Walton, who at sight of her
struck an attitude on the threshold, crossing her hands on her breast,
and rolling her eyes upward until only the whites were visible.
"What new pose is this, you goose?" laughed Betty, shaking her gently by
one shoulder.
"Don't laugh," was the solemn answer. "This is pious resignation to
fate." Then her hands dropped and she turned to Betty tragically.
"I've just come from an interview with Madam Chartley," she explained.
"And what do you think? That blessed old soul expects me to live up to
the motto on her teacups! But how can I give Hawkins his just due _if_ I
do? I had the loveliest things planned for his tormenting, but I'd be
ashamed to look her in the face if she ever found me out after this
interview.
"Oh, Betty, I don't want to renounce the world and the flesh and all the
other bad things this early in the term, but I'm afraid that I've
already done it. She's laid a spell on all of us."
"Has she sent for Lloyd and Allison, too?"
"Yes, Allison was the first victim. She came back in a regular
dare-to-be-a-Daniel mood, and announced that she intended to start in,
heart and soul, for the studio honours this year. Then Lloyd had her
turn, and she came back looking like Joan of Arc when she'd been
listening to the voices. I vowed she shouldn't have that effect on me,
but here I am, perfectly docile as you see, fangs drawn and claws cut. I
tremble for the effect on you, sweet innocent. Your wings will sprout
before you get back."
Betty laughed and hurried past her down the stairs. Evidently it was
Madam's custom to make the acquaintance of her new girls in this way,
one at a time. Only fifteen freshmen were admitted each year, so it was
possible for her to take a personal interest in every pupil.
Betty's heart fluttered expectantly as she paused an instant in the door
of the pink room. Madam Chartley had looked very imposing and dignified
as she presided at the lunch-table that noon, with the stately Hawkins
behind her chair and the stately portraits looking down from the walls.
She looked now as if she might be the original of one of these old
portraits herself, as she sat there in the high-backed chair, with the
griffins carved on its teakwood frame. Her gray gown trailed around her
in graceful folds. There was a soft fall of lace at wrists and throat,
and her white hair had a sheen like silver against the pink brocade with
which the chair was upholstered.
With a smile which seemed to take Betty straight into her confidence,
she held out her hand and drew her to a seat beside her. An
old-fashioned silver tea-service stood on a table at her elbow, and when
the maid had brought hot water, she busied herself in filling a cup for
Betty.
"There!" she said, as she passed it to her. "There's nothing like a cozy
chat over a cup of tea for warming acquaintances into friends."
Betty wondered, as she took a proffered slice of lemon, if Madam began
all her interviews in this way, and if she was to hear the same little
sermon about the crest on the ancestral teacups that Kitty had heard. It
certainly was an interesting crest. She lifted the fragile bit of china
for a closer survey. A mailed arm, rising out of a heart, clasped a
spear in its hand, and under it ran the motto, "I keep tryst."
[Illustration: "MADAM'S CONVERSATION LED FAR AWAY FROM THE CREST AND ITS
LESSON"]
But Madam's conversation led far away from the crest and its lesson. At
first it was about a quaint old English inn, where is served delicious
toasted scones with five o'clock tea. When she mentioned that, it was as
if they had discovered a mutual friend, for Betty cried out joyfully
that she had been there, and had spent a long rainy afternoon in one of
its rooms, where Scott had written many chapters of "Kenilworth." Betty
remembered afterward that not a word was said about school and its
obligations. It was of the Old Curiosity Shop they spoke, and the House
of Seven Gables. Madam promised to show her the autographs of Dickens
and Hawthorne, which she had in her collection, and a pen which had once
belonged to George Eliot.
Then Betty found that Madam had known Miss Alcott, and, before she
realized what she was doing, she had thrown herself down impulsively on
the stool at her feet, and, with both hands clasping the griffin's head
on the arm of the high-backed chair, was asking a dozen eager questions
about "Little Women" and the author who had been her first inspiration
to write.
Nearly an hour later, when she went back to her room, it was with
something singing in her heart that made her very solemn and very happy.
It was the immortal music of the Choir Invisible. She had been in the
unseen company of earth's best and noblest, and felt in her soul that
some day she, too, would have a right to be counted in that chorus,
having done something really great and worth while.
That evening after dinner Kitty bounced into the room where Allison sat
talking with Lloyd and Betty during recreation hour.
"To-morrow night there's to be the Old Girls' Welcome to the New!" she
cried. "Come on in, Juliet, and tell them about it."
Juliet thrust her head through the half-open door.
"Haven't time to stop," she answered, "but I'll tell this much. It's the
first of the great social functions. Everybody wears her party clothes
and a sweet smile. It's the first lesson of the year in How to attain
Ease under New and Exacting Conditions. No matter how the seniors snub
you later on, in order to teach you your proper place, you'll all be
birds of a feather that one time, and flock together as peaceably as pet
hens.
"Each new girl has an escort appointed by the entertaining committee,
who sends her flowers and calls for her and sees that her programme is
filled. So there are never any wallflowers the first night. No, Allison,
it isn't a dance. The programmes are for progressive conversation.
Somewhere in the background there's a piano playing waltzes and
two-steps, and so forth, but you talk out the numbers instead of dancing
them. Changing partners so often keeps you from getting bored, and
strangers can tell who is talking to them, for there are the names on
their programmes. You can refer to that when anybody comes up to claim
you. I'm to take Lloyd, and Sybil Green is to take Kitty. I haven't
found out the other assignments yet. I'll let you know as soon as I do.
Continued in our next."
With an airy wave of the hand she withdrew, leaving them to an animated
discussion of what to wear.
"You must remember that this isn't the only time you're to appear in
public, Katherine Walton," said Allison, severely, when Kitty proposed
her best array. "There's to be a reception at the White House next week,
and Friday night we're to go in to Washington to see Jefferson in 'Rip
Van Winkle,' and there's to be a studio tea soon, and a recital, and
all sorts of things. I saw the bulletin of the term's entertainments in
the hall this evening."
"_We_'ll never be seen at those things," insisted Kitty.
"We'll scarcely be a drop in the bucket. But to-morrow night, isn't the
whole affair for us? We'll be the whole show. We'll be _it_, Allison,
and 'it's my night to howl.' I intend to wear my rose-pink mull and a
rosebud in my raving tresses, and carry the gorgeous spangled fan that
the dear old admiral gave me in Manila. So there!"
"Then don't come near me," said Allison, with a warning shake of her
head, "for I am going to wear my cerise crepe de chine. It's lovely by
itself, but by the side of anything the shade of your pink mull it's the
most hideous, sickly colour you ever saw. I _wish_ you'd wear that pale
green dress, Kitty. You look sweet in that, and it goes so well with
mine."
"But, my dear sister," laughed Kitty, "I don't expect to spend any time
getting acquainted with _you_. I'll probably not be near you the whole
evening. It's not expected that, just because we are from Kentucky, we
have to pose as those two devoted creatures on the State seal,--stand
around with our hands clasped, exclaiming 'United we stand, divided we
fall!' to every one that comes up."
"Nevah mind, Allison," said Lloyd, laughing at Kitty's dramatic gestures
and her sister's worried expression. "I'll play 'State seal' with you. I
have a pale green almost the shade of Kitty's, and I'll wear the coral
clasps and chains that were Papa Jack's mothah's. He gave them to me
just before I left home. I'll show them to you."
She began to rummage through her trunk. Betty sat looking at the
ceiling, trying to decide the momentous question of dress for herself.
Finally she announced: "I'll just wear white, then I'll harmonize with
everybody, and can run up to the first one of you I happen to see when I
need a spark of courage. I know I'll be terribly embarrassed. It makes
me cold right now to think of meeting so many strangers."
But Betty's courage needed no reinforcing next evening, when Maria
Overlin, one of the seniors, took her in charge. The reception took
place in what had been the ballroom, in the days when Warwick Hall was
noted for its brilliant entertainments. Even its first hostess could not
have received her distinguished guests with courtlier grace than Madam
Chartley received her pupils, when, to the music of a stately minuet,
they filed past her down the long line of teachers.
For once, each of the new girls, no matter how timid or inexperienced in
social ways, tasted the sweets of popularity, and the four whom Juliet
Lynn had dubbed the Kentucky quartette were overwhelmed with attentions.
Juliet, who had hoped to escort Betty, was glad that Lloyd had fallen to
her lot when she saw what an admiring little court flocked around her
wherever she turned. In the pale green dress, with its clasps of pink
coral carved in the shape of tiny butterflies, she looked more
princess-like than ever. She wore a bracelet of the coral butterflies
also, and a slender circlet of them about her throat. They gave a soft
pink flush to her cheeks.
No sooner had she passed the receiving line than she was surrounded by a
group of white-gowned girls clamouring for an introduction and a place
on her programme.
"Whose initials are these?" she whispered to Juliet presently when the
card was all filled and there were still several girls asking to be
allowed to write their names on it.
"Couldn't I give Miss Bartlett this line where there's nothing but G. M.
scrawled on it?"
"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Juliet. "That's for Gabrielle Melville. It would
never do for you two to miss each other to-night. I put them down for
her, as she's to play later in the evening on the violin, you know, and
I knew she'd never get here in time to do it herself. She always has
such frantic times dressing. Just struggles into her things, never can
find half her clothes, and what she does manage to fall into catches and
rips in the struggle. Her hat is always over one ear, and her belts
never make connection in the back, but she's so adorable that nobody
minds her wild toilets. They laugh and say, 'Oh, it's just Gay.' That's
her nickname, you know. Here's Emily Chapman coming to claim you. Emily,
you can tell Lloyd some things about Gay, can't you?"
"I rather think so," laughed Emily. "We roomed together last year, and I
got her again this term. It took a fight, though, for she's the most
popular girl in school."
"Is she pretty?" asked Lloyd.
"We think so, don't we, Juliet? If she had any enemies, they might say
that she has red hair and a pug nose. But that would be exaggerating.
Her hair is that beautiful bronzy auburn that crinkles around her face
and blows in her eyes till she always seems to be bringing a breeze with
her."
"And her nose isn't pug exactly," chimed in Juliet. "There's just a
darling, saucy little tip to it, that seems to suit her. She wouldn't be
half as pretty with the approved Gibson girl kind, no matter how perfect
it was."
"And her complexion is so lovely," Emily resumed, enthusiastically. "And
her eyes are a jolly, laughing kind of brown, with an amber sparkle in
them, except when she gets into one of her intense, serious moods. Then
they are almost black, they're so deep and velvety. She's never twice in
the same mood. Oh! There she comes now."
A side door opened, and a slim little thing all in white, with a violin
under her arm and a distracted pucker on her face, hurried up to the
piano. Nervously feeling her belt to make sure that she was presentable
before turning her back on the audience, she whispered to the girl who
was to play her accompaniments, and began tuning the violin. Then,
tucking it under her chin as if she loved it, she listened an instant to
the piano prelude, and drew her bow softly across the strings.
"Good!" whispered Emily. "It's that Mexican swallow song. She always
has such a rapt expression on her face when she plays that. She makes me
think of St. Cecilia. She's so earnest in all she does. If it's no more
than making fudge, she throws her whole soul into it, just that way.
She's as intense as if the fate of a nation depended on whatever she
happens to be doing."
As Lloyd joined loudly in the applause which followed the performance,
another girl came up to claim her attention. It was Myra Carr, the
senior who had taken Allison under her wing.
"Doesn't Gay play splendidly?" she exclaimed, not knowing that she had
been the previous topic of conversation. "We think she's a genius. She
improvises little things sometimes in the twilight that are so sweet and
sad they make you cry. Then she's unconventional enough to be a genius.
She's always shocking people without meaning to, and so careless, she'd
lose her head if nature hadn't attended to the fastenings.
"We all love her dearly, but we vowed the last time we went sightseeing
that she should never go with us again unless she let us tie her up in a
bag, so that nothing could drop out by the way. First she lost her hat.
It blew off the trolley-car, one of those 'seeing Washington' affairs,
you know. She had to go bareheaded all the rest of the way. Then she
lost her pocketbook, and such a time as we had hunting that. The time
before, she lost a locket that had been a family heirloom, and we missed
our train and got caught in a shower looking for it."
"Where does she live?" asked Lloyd, watching the bright face that was
making its way toward them across the crowded room.
"At Fort Sam Houston, down in San Antonio. Her father is an army officer
at that post."
There was no time for further discussion, for Gabrielle was coming
toward her with outstretched hand.
"This is Juliet's Princess, isn't it?" she asked, with a smile that
captivated Lloyd at once, flashing over the whitest of little teeth.
"You're getting all sorts of titles to-night. I heard a girl speak of
you as a mermaid in that pale sea-green gown and corals, but I've come
over here on purpose to call you the 'Little Colonel.' You don't know
how much good it does me to hear a military title once more. Out at the
fort it's all majors and captains and such things."
Then, dropping her grown-up society manner, she suddenly giggled,
turning to include Emily in the conversation.
"Oh, girls, I had the worst time getting dressed this evening that I
ever had in my life. When I unpacked my trunk yesterday, everything was
so wrinkled that there was only one dress I could wear without having it
pressed; this white one. So I laid it out, but, when I went to put it on
to-night, I found that mamma had made a mistake in packing, and put in
Lucy's skirt instead. Lucy is my older sister," she explained to Lloyd.
"We each had a dotted Swiss this summer, made exactly alike, but Lucy is
so much taller than I that her skirts trail on me. Just look how
imposing!"
She swept across the floor and back to show the effect of her trail.
"Of course there was nothing to do at that late hour but pin it up in
front and go ahead. I'm afraid every minute that I'll trip and fall all
over myself, but I do feel so dignified when I feel my train sweeping
along behind me. The pins keep falling out all around the belt, and I
can't help stepping on the hem in front. I love trains," she added,
switching hers forward with a grand air that was so childlike in its
enjoyment that Lloyd felt impelled to hug her. "It gives you such a
dressed-up, peacocky feeling."
Then she looked up in her most soulful, intense way, as if she were
asking for important information. "Do you know whether it's true or not?
_Does_ a peacock stop strutting if it happens to see its feet? My old
nurse told me that, and said that it shows that pride always goes before
a fall. I never was where they kept peacocks before I came to Warwick
Hall, and I've spent hours watching Madam's to see if it is true. But
they are always so busy strutting, I've never been able to catch them
looking at their feet."
She glanced at her own feet as she spoke, then gasped and, covering her
face with her hands, sank limply into a chair in the corner behind her.
"What's the matter?" cried Juliet, alarmed by the sudden change.
"Look! Oh, just _look_!" was the hysterical answer, as she thrust out
both feet, and sat pointing at them tragically, with fingers and thumbs
of both hands outspread.
"No wonder they felt queer. I was so intent on getting my dress pinned
up, and in rushing out in time to play, that I couldn't take time to
analyze my feelings and discover the cause of the queerness. Madeline
blew in at a critical point to borrow a pin, and that threw me off, I
suppose."
From under the white skirt protruded two feet as unlike as could well be
imagined. One was cased in dainty white kid, the other in an old red
felt bedroom slipper, edged with black fur.
"And it would have been all the same," sighed Gay, "if I had been going
to an inaugural ball to hobnob with crowned heads. And I had hoped to
make _such_ a fine impression on the Little Colonel," she added, in a
plaintive tone, with a childlike lifting of the face that Lloyd thought
most charming.
If the mistake had been made by any other girl in the school, it would
not have seemed half so ridiculous, but whatever Gay did was
irresistibly funny. A laughing crowd gathered around her, as she sat
with the red slipper and the white one stretched stiffly out in front of
her, bewailing her fate.
"Anyhow," she remarked, "I'll always have the satisfaction of knowing
that I put my best foot foremost, and if they had been alike I couldn't
have done that. Now could I?" And the girls laughed again, because it
was Gay who said it in her own inimitable way, and because the old felt
slipper looked so ridiculous thrust out from under the dainty white
gown. As others came crowding up to see what was causing so much
merriment in that particular corner, Gay attempted to slip out and go to
her room to correct her mistake. But Sybil Green, pushing through the
outer ring, came up with Allison and Kitty.
"Gay," she began, "here are the girls that you especially wanted to
meet: General Walton's daughters."
Gay's face flushed with pleasure, and, forgetting her errand, she
impulsively stretched out a hand to each, and held them while she
talked.
"Oh, I'm so glad to meet you!" she cried. "I wish that I had known that
you girls were here yesterday before papa left. He is Major Melville,
and he was such a friend of your father's. He was on that long Indian
campaign with him in Arizona, and I've heard him talk of him by the
hour. And last week"--here she lowered her voice so that only Allison
and Kitty heard, and were thrilled by the sweet seriousness of it. "Last
week he took me out to Arlington to carry a great wreath of laurel. When
he'd laid it on the grave, he stood there with bared head, looking all
around, and I heard him say, in a whisper, 'No one in all Arlington has
won his laurels more bravely than you, my captain.' You see it was as a
captain that papa knew him best. He would have been so pleased to have
seen you girls."
Kitty squeezed the hand that still held hers and answered, warmly: "Oh,
you dear, I hope we'll be as good friends as our fathers were!" And
Allison answered, winking back the tears that had sprung to her eyes:
"Thank you for telling us about the laurel. Mother will appreciate it so
much."
While this conversation was going on at Lloyd's elbow, Betty came up to
her on the other side. "Please see if my dress is all right in the
back," she whispered. "It feels as if it were unfastened." Then, as
Lloyd assured her it was properly buttoned, she added, in an undertone:
"Have you met Maud Minor? She's one of the new girls."
Lloyd shook her head.
"Then I'm going to introduce you as soon as I can. She knows Malcolm
MacIntyre."
"Knows Malcolm!" exclaimed Lloyd, in amazement. "Where on earth did she
ever meet him?"
"At the seashore last summer. She can't talk about anything else. She
thinks he is so handsome and has such beautiful manners and is so
adorably romantic. Those are her very words. She has his picture.
Evidently he has talked to her about you, for she's so curious to know
you. She asked a string of questions that I thought were almost
impertinent."
"Where is she?" asked Lloyd.
"There, that girl in white crossing the room with the fat one in
lavender."
Lloyd gave a long, critical look, and then said, slowly: "She's the
prettiest girl in the room, and she makes me think of something I've
read, but I can't recall it."
"I know," said Betty, "but you'll laugh at me if I say Tennyson again.
It's from 'Maud'--
"'I kissed her slender hand.
She took the kiss sedately.
Maud is not seventeen,
But she is tall and stately.'
"But she is not as sedate as she looks," added Betty, truthfully. "I'd
like her better if she didn't gush. That's the only word that will
express it. And it seemed queer for her to take me into her confidence
the minute she was introduced. Right away she gave me to understand that
she'd had a sort of an affair with Malcolm. She didn't say so in so many
words, but she gave me the impression that he had been deeply
interested in her, in a romantic way, you know."
Lloyd looked at Maud again, more critically this time, and with keener
interest. Then her thoughts flew back to the churchyard stile where they
had paused in their gathering of Christmas greens one winter day. For an
instant she seemed to see the handsome boy looking down at her, begging
a token of the Princess Winsome, and saying, in a low tone, "I'll be
whatever you want me to be, Lloyd."
Juliet's voice broke in on her reverie. "Miss Sherman, allow me to
present Miss Minor."
Maud was slightly taller than Lloyd, but it was not her extra inches
alone which seemed to give her the air of looking down on every one. It
was her patronizing manner. Lloyd resented it. Instinctively she drew
herself up and responded somewhat haughtily.
"My dear, I've been simply _dying_ to meet you," began Maud, effusively.
"Ever since I found out that you were the girl Malcolm MacIntyre used to
be so fond of."
Lloyd responded coldly, certain that Malcolm had not discussed their
friendship in a way to warrant this outburst from a stranger.
"Do you know his brothah Keith, too?" she asked. "We're devoted to both
the boys. You might say we grew up togethah, for they visited in the
Valley so much. We've been playmates since we were babies. You must meet
the Walton girls. They are Malcolm's cousins, you know."
Before Maud realized how it came about, Lloyd had graciously turned her
over to Allison and Kitty, and made her escape with burning cheeks and a
resentful feeling. Maud's words kept repeating themselves: "So adorably
romantic. The girl Malcolm _used to be_ so fond of!" They made her
vaguely uncomfortable. She wondered why.
For another hour she went on making acquaintances and adding to her
store of information about Warwick Hall. They couldn't have
chafing-dishes in their rooms, one frivolous sophomore told her. The
insurance companies objected after one girl spilled a bottle of alcohol
and set fire to the curtains. But once a week those who pined for candy
could make it over the gas-stove in the Domestic Science kitchen. Those
who were too lazy to make it could buy it Monday afternoons from Mammy
Easter, an old coloured woman who lived in a cabin on the place. She was
famous for her pralines, the sophomore declared. "We have jolly charades
and impromptu tableaux up in the gymnasium sometimes. Oh, school at the
Hall is one grand lark!"
"Don't you believe it," said the spectacled junior who monopolized Lloyd
next. "It's a hard dig to keep up to the mark they set here. But I must
say it is an agreeable kind of a dig," she added.
"It's good just to wake up in the morning and know there's going to be
another whole day of it. The classes are so interesting, and the
teachers so interested in us, that they bring out the very best in
everybody. Even a grasshopper would have its ambition aroused if it
stayed in this atmosphere long."
She peered at Lloyd through her glasses as if to satisfy herself that
she would be understood, and then added, confidentially: "I can fairly
feel myself grow here. I feel the way I imagine the morning-glories do
when they find themselves climbing up the trellis. They just stretch out
their hands and everything helps them up,--the sun and the soil, the
wind and the dew. And here at Warwick Hall there's so much to help. Even
the little glimpses we get over the garden wall into the outside world
of Washington, with its politics and great men. But those two people
over there help me most of all." She nodded toward Madam Chartley and
Miss Chilton, the teacher of English, who were now seated together on a
sofa near the door.
"When I look at them I feel that the morning-glory vine must climb just
as high as it possibly can, and shake out a wealth of bells in return
for all that has been given toward its growth. Don't you?"
"Yes," answered Lloyd, slightly embarrassed by the soulful gaze turned
on her through the spectacles. "Betty would enjoy knowing you," she
exclaimed. "She is always saying and writing such things."
"Oh, I thought that you were the one that writes," answered the junior.
"Aren't you the one the freshmen are going to elect class editor for
their page of the college paper?"
"No, indeed!" protested Lloyd, laughing at the idea. "Come across the
room with me and I'll find Betty for you."
"There won't be time to-night," responded the junior, "for there goes
the music that means good night. They always play 'America' as a signal
that it's time to go."
"What makes you so quiet?" asked Betty, a little later, as they slowly
undressed. She had chattered along, commenting on the events of the
evening, ever since they came to their room, but Lloyd had seemed
remarkably unresponsive.
"Oh, nothing," yawned Lloyd. "I was just thinking of that fairy-tale of
the three weavers. I'll turn out the light."
As she reached up to press the electric button, she thought again, for
the twentieth time, "I wonder what it was that Malcolm told Maud Minor."
Then she nestled down among the pillows, saying, sleepily, to herself:
"Anyway, I'm mighty glad that I nevah gave him that curl he begged
for."