CHAPTER X
SHADYSIDE SCHOOL
"Isn't it a pretty station!" said Louise Littell.
Betty agreed with her.
The lawn was still green about the gray stone building and the tiles onthe low-hanging roof were moss green, too. The long platform was roofedover and seemed swarming with girls and boys. Evidently a train had comein from the other direction a few minutes before the Junction train, forbags and suitcases and trunks were heaped up outside the baggage roomdoor and the busses backed up to the edge of the gravel driveway werepartially filled with passengers.
The blue and silver uniforms of the Salsette cadets were much inevidence, and Betty's first thought was of how nice Bob Henderson wouldlook in uniform.
"There's our friend!" whispered Tommy Tucker, directing Betty'sattention to the severe-looking elderly woman whom he had so bothered onthe train. "Gee, do you suppose she goes to Shadyside? I thought it wasa girls' School!"
"Oh, do be quiet!" scolded Bobby Littell "Tommy, you've got us in a peckof trouble--she's one of the teachers!"
"How do you know?" demanded Tommy. "Who told you?"
"Well, if you'd keep still a minute, you'd hear," said theexasperated Bobby.
Sure enough, a pleasant, fresh-faced woman, hardly more than a girl, wasescorting the gray-haired woman to a waiting touring car.
"You're the last of the staff to come," she said clearly. Mrs. Eusticewas beginning to worry about you. Will you tell her that I'm coming up inthe bus with the girls?"
"All right, you win," admitted Tommy. "Why couldn't she say she was ateacher instead of acting so blamed exclusive? Anyway, she probably won'tconnect you girls with me--all boys look alike to her."
"She has a wonderful memory--like a camera," surmised Bobby gloomily."You wait and see."
"Girls, are all of you for Shadyside?" The young woman had come up tothem and now she smiled at the giggling, chattering group with engagingfriendliness. "I thought you were. We take this auto-stage over here.Give your baggage checks to this porter. I'm Miss Anderson, the physicalinstructor."
"Salsette boys this way!" boomed a stentorian voice.
"Good-bye, Betty. See you soon," whispered Bob, giving Betty's hand ahurried squeeze. "We're only across the lake, you know."
"You chaps, _move_!" directed the voice snappily.
With one accord the group dissolved, the boys hastening to the stagemarked "Salsette" and the girls following Miss Anderson.
There were two stages for the Academy and two for Shadyside, and asmaller bus which, they afterward learned, followed the route to thetown, which was not on the railroad.
"Betty, darling!"
A pretty girl tumbled down the stage steps and nearly choked Betty withthe fervency of her embrace.
It was Norma Guerin, and Alice was waiting, smiling. Betty was delightedto meet these old friends, and she introduced them to the Littell girlsand Libbie and Frances in the happy, tangled fashion that suchintroductions usually are performed. Names and faces get straightened outmore gradually.
The stage in which they found themselves, for the seven girls insisted onsitting near each other, was well-filled. They had started and werelurching along the rather uneven road when Betty found herself staring ata girl on the other side of the bus.
"Where have I seen her before?" she puzzled. "I wonder--does she looklike some one I know? Oh, I remember! She's the girl we saw on thetrain--the one that took Bob's seat!"
Just then a girl sitting up near the driver's seat leaned forward.
"Ada!" she called. "Ada Nansen! Are you the girl they say brought fivetrunks and three hat boxes?"
"Well, they're little ones!" said the girl sitting opposite Betty. "Iwanted to bring three wardrobe trunks, but mother thought Mrs. Eusticemight make a fuss."
So the girl's name was Ada Nansen. Betty was sure she remembered theirencounter on the train, if for no other reason than that Ada studiouslyrefused to meet her eye. Betty was too inexperienced to know that acertain type of girl never takes a step toward making a new friendunless she has the worldly standing of that friend first clearly fixedin her mind.
"What gorgeous furs she has!" whispered Norma Guerin. "Do you knowher, Betty?"
Betty shook her head. Strictly speaking, she did not know Ada. What shedid know of her was not pleasant, and it was part of Betty's personalcreed never to repeat anything unkind if nothing good was to come of it.
"I can tell Bob, 'cause he knows about her," she said to herself. "Won'the be surprised! I do hope she hasn't brought a huge wardrobe to schoolto make Norma and Alice feel bad."
Though both the Guerin girls wore the neatest blouses and suits, anygirl could immediately have told you that their clothes were not newthat season and that the little bag each carried had been oiled andpolished at home.
That Ada Nansen's trunks were worrying Norma, too, her next remarkshowed.
"Alice and I have only one trunk between us," she confided to Betty."Mother said Mrs. Eustice never allowed the girls to dress much. I madeAlice's party frock and mine, too. They're plain white."
"So's mine," said Betty quickly. "Mrs. Littell wouldn't let her daughtershave elaborate clothes, and the Littells have oceans of money. I don'tbelieve Ada can wear her fine feathers now she has 'em."
Twenty minutes' ride brought them in sight of the school, and as the busturned down the road that led to the lake, many exclamations of pleasurewere heard.
A double row of weeping willows, now bare, of course, bordered the lake,and the sloping lawns of the school led down to these. The red brickbuildings of the Salsette Academy could be glimpsed on the other shore.Shadyside consisted of a large brick and limestone building that thelast term pupils in the busses obligingly explained was the"administration," where classes were taught. The gymnasium was also inthis building. In addition were three gray stone buildings, connectedwith bridges, in which were the dormitories, the teachers' rooms, thedining room, the infirmary, and the kitchens. The administration buildingwas also connected with the other buildings by a covered passagewaywhich, they were to discover, was opened only in bad weather. Mrs.Eustice, the principal, had a theory that girls did not get out into thefresh air often enough.
The main building possessed a handsome doorway, and here the bussesstopped and discharged their passengers.
"Ada, my dear love!" cried a girl from the bus behind the one in whichBetty and her friends had ridden.
An over-dressed, stout girl advanced upon Ada Nansen and kissed heraffectionately.
"Look quick! That's Ruth Gladys Royal!" whispered Bobby. "I hope theyroom together--they'll be a pair. Ada, my dear love!" she mimickedwickedly. "Libbie, let that be a warning to you--Ruth Gladys Royal isterribly romantic, too!"
Miss Anderson, smiling and unhurried, marshaled her charges into thelarge foyer and announced that they would be assigned to roomsbefore luncheon.
"Mrs. Eustice will speak to you in the assembly hall this afternoon,"said Miss Anderson. "And you will meet her and the teachers for a littlesocial hour."
Two busy young clerks were at work in the office adjoining the foyer, andfor those who were already provided with a room-mate the task of securinga room was a matter of only a few moments.
Our girls, with the exception of Louise, had paired off when they hadregistered for the term. Bobby Littell and Betty Gordon were, of course,inseparable. Libbie and Frances, great friends in their home town,naturally gravitated together, though Betty would have chosen a lessstudious room-mate for the dreamy Libbie--she needed a girl who wouldknow more accurately what she was doing. Norma and Alice Guerin were toshare a room, and Louise felt forlornly out of things when Miss Andersoncame up to her bringing a red-haired, freckle-faced girl with wide grayeyes and a boyish grin.
"Louise Littell--you are Louise, aren't you?" asked the teacher. "Well,here's a girl who's come to us from a Western army post. Her name isConstance Howard, and she doesn't know a single girl. Don't you thinkyou two might be happy together?"
r /> Constance smiled again, and Louise warmed perceptibly. Louise was theleast friendly of the three Littell girls.
"I'll let you play my ukulele," offered Constance eagerly.
"Let me. She doesn't know a ukulele from a music box," said Bobby, withsisterly frankness. "Come on, girls, let's go up and see our rooms."
They tramped up the broad staircase and crossed one of the bridges tofind themselves in a delightful, sunny building with corridors carpetedin softest green. The rooms apparently were all connecting, and theteacher who met them said the eight friends might have adjoining rooms aslong as "they gave no trouble."
"I'm your corridor teacher, Miss Lacey," she explained.
"Let's be glad she isn't the one we saw on the train," whispered theirrepressible Bobby, as they all trooped into the first room.