“THE GLASS OF FASHION”
The two girls had supper in Miss Small’s room. Miss Small was the under
housekeeper, and a very excellent woman. Beth liked her at once.
While they were still at the table, a set of Japanese gongs, somewhere
in the corridor, rung by electricity, sounded. This marked half-past
eight.
“No chance to show you off to the girls to-night, Beth,” said Jolly
Molly. “That’s the signal for us all to retire to our rooms. Of course,
‘lights out’ is not sounded for an hour yet; but visiting back and
forth in the final hour before bedtime is frowned upon by the ‘powers
that be.’ That is why I hope the madam will give you Number Eighty. I
have Eighty-one. There’s a door between and we have the sole use of a
private bathroom. It’s scrumptious!”
Just then a lady entered whom Beth had not seen before--a
pleasant-faced lady with youthful features but very white hair. Miss
Carroll owned a baby-fair, pink and white complexion. Her lovely hair,
massed high upon her small head, made her look queenly--something, Beth
whispered to Molly, in the style of Marie Antoinette!
“Is this Miss Baldwin, Molly?” asked the lady.
“Yes, Miss Carroll,” Jolly Molly said. “She is my new chum.”
“Yes? She is to occupy Eighty. I hope we shall have only good reports
this half from Eighty and Eighty-one.”
“My goodness!” whispered Molly to Beth. “It’s fairly uncanny the way
they seem to expect bad reports from us! Madam hinted at it. I don’t
see how they all came to have such a doubtful opinion of you, Bethesda
Elizabeth!”
“Of me?” gasped the new girl.
“Why--yes--of course. They _know_ me,” said Molly, demurely.
Beth laughed. She was sure her new chum had not a spark of real
wickedness in her. But Molly Granger was full of mischief. Beth now
asked about Miss Carroll.
“Oh, she’s math and Eng--and an awfully nice sort, too.”
“‘Math’ and ‘Eng?’” repeated Beth, laughing. “Is that her religion and
politics?”
“No. What she teaches. Mathematics and English.”
“Oh!”
“She’s altogether lovely,” Molly said. “That cannot be said of all
the instructors--no, indeed! Good-night, Miss Small,” she added, in a
louder key to the under housekeeper. “Come along, Bethesda! We’ll go up
and say ‘how-do’ to our rooms. Have our bags been sent up, Miss Small?”
“Jonas has them on the lift, Miss,” the housekeeper said.
“We’ll walk,” said Molly to Beth. “I don’t like that elevator,
anyway--just because they call it a ‘lift.’ That’s too awfully
‘Henglish’ for me, you know. I am a true-blue American girl--a regular
‘jingoess.’ I shout for the Stars and Stripes, and scream with the
eagle----”
“Or at a mouse?” suggested Beth, wickedly.
“Ugh! Yes! Who doesn’t?”
“I wonder if Cynthia Fogg was hired by Madam Hammersly?” Beth said
aloud, as they mounted the main stairway.
“I’d really like to know, too,” agreed Molly.
“You don’t suppose that Cynthia was turned out? Put right out of doors,
I mean, if the madam did not like her looks?”
“Sh!” whispered Molly. “That’s why I sprang Cynthia on the madam the
way I did. She’s really the most tender-hearted thing you ever saw or
heard of. She only appears stern. And when she understands that that
girl has no home and friends----”
“You think she will be kind to her?”
“Sure she will! She’s kind to all the girls who work for her. Only
she’s awfully particular. You ought to see her going around after them
when they sweep and dust. Oh! if they leave a speck of dust---- M-m-m!”
“I hope she’ll take Cynthia on,” sighed Beth, as they reached the top
of the stairs.
Two corridors branched away, right and left, from the gallery around
the hall.
“I tell you how we’ll find out about Cynthia--maybe,” said Molly.
“We’ll ask Jonas. Come on! We want our bags, too. He’ll be waiting at
the elevator in the south wing.”
She started along the corridor into the wing in question, and then
mounted ahead of Beth another flight to the third floor. They met no
other girls, although some of the doors were open and Beth caught
glimpses of pleasant interiors and groups of gossiping girls.
They finally came, panting, to the elevator cage, where a shiny-faced
negro boy sat on his stool inside the car, with the bags belonging to
the two girls at his feet.
“I’m yere, Miss Molly,” he said, grinning at the girl he knew.
“I see you, Jonas,” she said, collecting her suitcase and bag. “I’ve
had my eyes treated while I was home and I can see pretty well now,
Jonas.”
“He! he!” giggled the black boy.
“Say, Jonas! Tell me something.”
“Yes’m,” said Jonas promptly, as he saw Molly fumbling in her purse.
“Who is the new girl the madam has just hired?”
“Lawsy!” chuckled Jonas. “How’d you knowed she hired that girl?”
“She was in madam’s room while we were,” said Molly, composedly.
“You mean that tall, freckled-faced girl, don’t you?” asked Jonas.
“Yes. What is her name?”
“Cynthie. Dat wot Miss Small called her when she brought her
downstairs,” said Jonas.
The two girls exchanged satisfied glances. Molly put a small coin in
the boy’s palm. “Come on, Beth,” she said. “Eighty and Eighty-one are
right around this way.”
A side corridor brought them, followed by Jonas with the bags, to two
doors not far from each other and with the two numbers in question
painted on the lintels. Other doors were open on the corridor and Molly
Granger was hailed by other girls.
“Hullo, Jolly Molly!”
“How are the seven pussy cats?” was one mysterious greeting.
“How’s tricks, Molly?” demanded one girl. “Full of new ones?”
“Sh! don’t ruin my reputation right at the start,” begged Molly, of
this last girl.
Beth was peering into the open door of Number Eighty--her room, where
Jonas had already left her bag. Suddenly a voice drawled behind her:
“Who is that with you, Molly Granger?”
“My new chum,” said Molly, sharply; and Beth turned to see who had
first spoken.
A girl stood at the open door directly across the hall from Number
Eighty. She was a pale girl in a light blue kimono of heavy, beautiful
silk, with silver dragons worked upon it--a most beautiful garment,
Beth thought. The girl herself was languid in her manner, had pale
eyelashes and hair as well as bloodless complexion. Indeed, she looked
as though some pigment was lacking in her system entirely, she was so
positively colorless.
“What’s her name, Molly?” drawled this apparition.
“This is Miss Beth Baldwin. Miss Maude Grimshaw, Beth. You live right
opposite to each other,” whispered Molly, in conclusion, “and, believe
me! you have opposite natures.”
Miss Grimshaw had given Beth a cold little nod and had gone back into
her room.
“What a beautiful kimono that is she wears,” Beth said calmly.
“Maude is the one of whom I told you,” Molly sniffed. “Our ‘glass of
fashion and mold of form.’”
“Oh! the dreadfully fashionable girl?”
“Fashion is no name for it!” groaned Molly. “She sports the finest
frocks at Rivercliff. She turns all our heads. Oh! she’s a charmer.”
“Why,” said Beth, “I fancy you don’t like her, Molly.”
“Cracky-me!” ejaculated Molly, round-eyed. “How did you come to guess
that?”
Beth saw that her friend felt rather keenly on this subject, so she did
not probe deeper. She had not seen Miss Grimshaw long enough, herself,
to judge the pale girl. But Molly seemed to be such a universal
favorite, and so kind and merry with everybody else, that Beth wondered
about Maude Grimshaw. As it chanced, Beth was soon to learn just what
her neighbor in the blue silk kimono was.
At the present time, however, the girl from Hudsonvale was more
interested in the room she was to occupy. There were small girls
in the school who roomed together--“a whole raft of primes in each
dormitory,” Molly explained--but the older pupils of Rivercliff had
each a room of her own and they could live as privately as they could
at home. And when she had seen them, Beth thought Numbers Eighty and
Eighty-one must be the nicest rooms in the whole school.
“Which they are--about,” Molly said, when Beth expressed this belief.
“I expected to have to fight for Eighty-one when I came back this fall.
You see, Greba Purcell had your room for four years. She left in June
just before graduation. Right away Princess Fancyfoot----”
“Who?” gasped Beth.
“That’s what I sometimes call Maude Grimshaw. She wanted a couple of
her ‘Me toos’ to have Eighty and Eighty-one----”
“What do you mean by ‘Me toos?’”
“Why, girls who agree always with Princess Fancyfoot. There are ‘sich,’
my dear, though you mightn’t suppose it,” Molly said, laughing.
“‘For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered
together.’”
“Oh, Molly! I wouldn’t speak so,” begged Beth.
“Oh, pshaw! _Grim_-shaw, I might say,” chuckled Molly. “You don’t know
her yet.”
But there was so much to see and so many new ideas to grasp, that
Beth did not that evening give much thought to the possibility of an
unpleasant neighbor. Her own room was of good size with two windows.
The bathroom between Number Eighty and Eighty-one was tiled and had a
shower.
“You see,” explained Molly, “Greba’s father had this bath put in at
his own expense for her particular use. Miss Process, who had my room
before I got it, enjoyed Miss Purcell’s friendship, too. Oh! Greba
was an awfully nice girl--and her father could have bought and sold
Princess Fancyfoot’s father half a dozen times over and never missed
the money. The Purcells are a different breed of rich folks from the
Grimshaws--believe me!
“And say! we’re two lucky girls to get these rooms. First grades don’t
usually get their pick of accommodations. No, indeedy!”
It was not until the next day, however, that Beth realized the truth
of this statement of Molly’s--and learned, too, what a very unpleasant
neighbor she had in Maude Grimshaw.