Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/66



this tale happened last year, and I have suddenly taken it into my head to write it up—probably for the reason that I ought to be doing my geometry review at this present moment. To begin at the beginning (Miss Noble says that ’s a very poor beginning, but no matter), it was the first day of October, when the whole school devotes itself to welcoming the new girls, The old girls don’t come till the next day, but Miss Brathwaite always asks a few of the old ones to come early so as to help settle the new little ladies. Among this number my cheerful and reassuring self was selected. There were three or four more of our “crowd,” too, and in the intervals when we were n’t being introduced, or getting room-keys, or discovering trunks, or trotting people to their rooms, we ’d swoop down on Miss Noble in her corner, and all talk at once about our summer, provided Miss Noble was n’t talking to fond parents herself. Miss Noble is our English teacher, and she's a brick. She wears the prettiest shirt-waists, and I don't believe she ’s more than twenty-five.

I was just engaged in describing my thrilling escape from a watery grave in the previous July, when Miss Brathwaite summoned me to my ninth introduction of the morning:

“This is Harriet Smalley, Mr. Prentiss; and this is Natalie Prentiss, Harry. Natalic is to room in 320 with Cassandra Ober. The room is unlocked; will you show them the way?”

I saw a fat, stumpy girl of about sixteen. I decided she was sixteen by the way she could n’t manage her skirt going upstairs. I mentally deposited her in the younger set—most of the girls in our crowd are eighteen. The curious thing about her was her face. She had the most perfectly expressionless face you ever saw, and it rather bothered you, too, because it looked as if it ought to be pretty, and yet it wasn’t. I rather liked the papa. The last one I had met was so pompous I wanted to thump him; but this one was anxious and worried, and he acted as if I were the one being on earth who could cheer him up. Was the room in a good location—plenty of sun? Not too many stairs? We had plenty of time to be oat of doors? We had plenty to eat? He hoped Natalie would be well here. We were well here, were n’t we? And happy? The life was happy, was n’t it? ] was really sorry for him, and I did n’t think he needed to be so fussed up over the health of such a hearty, sunburnt girl as Natalie. I rattled away, telling him all about the jolly times we had, and that Natalie could n’t help enjoying it all just as soon as she got acquainted, and that never took long, But Natalie did n’t exhibit the faintest interest in my remarks. She was looking out of the window.

“Do you walk in those woods?” she asked.

“Some of the girls take their required ex that way. I go in for the games myself. Do you play tennis or golf or hockey?”

“No.”

“Hockey ’s fine sport!” I assured her; but she seemed to prefer to gaze at the woods rather than to talk to my humble self, and so after I ’d looked up her trunk, which was lettered Los Angeles, and told her about luncheon, I ran off and left them. I wondered what Cass would think of Natalie, I should n’t have wished to room with Cass myself, and I’m not fussy.

I suppose it ’s just the same in all boarding-schools the first six or eight weeks of the fall—the same program of behavior, I mean. You come back with the most exalted notions of being good to the new girls, Miss Brathwaite gives a touching little talk on the subject the first chapel night, and you run right out from chapel and pitch in, and are so sweet to the homesick for the first week that it ’s positively sickish, At the end of a week you can’t stand such angelhood another minute, and so