CHAPTER IV
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Greenburg was the station on the N. Y. F. & B. Railroad nearest toArdmore College. It was a small city of some thirty or forty thousandinhabitants. The people, not alone in the city but in the surroundingcountry, were a rather wealthy class. Ardmore was a mile from theoutskirts of the town.
Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron, her chum, had arrived with other girlsbound for the college on the noon train. Of course, the chums knew noneof their fellow pupils by name, but it was easily seen which of thosealighting from the train were bound for Ardmore.
There were two large auto-stages in waiting, and Ruth and Helen followedthe crowd of girls briskly getting aboard the buses. As they saw othergirls do, the two chums from Cheslow gave their trunk checks to a man onthe platform, but they clung to their hand-baggage.
"Such a nice looking lot of girls," murmured Helen in Ruth's ear. "It'sfine! I'm sure we shall have a delightful time at college, Ruthie."
"And some hard work," observed Ruth, laughing, "if we expect to keep upwith them. There are no dunces in this crowd, my dear."
"Goodness, no!" agreed her friend. "They all look as sharp as needles."
There were girls of all the classes at the station, as was easily seen.Ruth and Helen chanced to get into a seat with two of the seniors, whoseemed most awfully sophisticated to the recent graduates of BriarwoodHall.
"You are just entering, are you not--you and your friend?" asked thenearest senior of Ruth.
"Yes," admitted the girl of the Red Mill, feeling and looking very shy.
The young women smiled quietly, saying:
"I am Miss Dexter, and am beginning my senior year. I am glad to be thefirst to welcome you to Ardmore."
"Thank you so much!" Ruth said, recovering her self-possession. Then shetold Miss Dexter her own name and introduced Helen.
"You girls have drawn your room numbers, I presume?"
"They were drawn for us," Ruth said. "We are to be in Dare Hall and hopeto have adjoining rooms."
"That is nice," said Miss Dexter. "It is so much pleasanter when twofriends enter together. I am at Hoskin Hall myself. I shall be glad tohave you two freshmen look me up when you are once settled."
"Thank you," Ruth said again, and Helen found her voice to ask:
"Are all the seniors in Hoskin Hall, and all the freshmen at Dare Hall?"
"Oh, no. There are members of each class in all four of thedormitories," Miss Dexter explained.
"I suppose there will be much for us to learn," sighed Ruth. "It isdifferent from a boarding school."
"Do you both come from a boarding school?" asked their new acquaintance.
"We are graduates of Briarwood Hall," Helen said, with pride.
"Oh, indeed?" Miss Dexter looked sharply at Ruth again. "Did you sayyour name was Ruth Fielding?"
"Yes, Miss Dexter."
"Why, you must be the girl who wrote a picture play to help build adormitory for your school!" exclaimed the senior. "Really, how nice."
"There, Ruth!" said Helen, teasingly, "see what it is to be famous."
"I--I hope my reputation will not be held against me," Ruth said,laughing. "Let me tell you, Miss Dexter, we all at Briarwood helped toswell that dormitory fund."
"I fancy so," said the senior. "But all of your schoolmates could nothave written a scenario which would have been approved by the AlectrionFilm Corporation."
"I should say not!" cried Helen, warmly. "And it was a great picture,too."
"It was clever, indeed," agreed Miss Dexter. "I saw it on the screen."
Miss Dexter introduced the girl at the other end of the seat--anothersenior, Miss Purvis. The two entering freshmen felt flattered--how couldthey help it? They had expected, as freshmen, to be quite haughtilyignored by the seniors and juniors.
But there were other matters to interest Ruth and Helen as the auto-busrolled out of the city. The way was very pleasant; there were beautifulhomes in the suburbs of Greenburg. And after they were passed, therewere lovely fields and groves on either hand. The chums thought they hadseldom seen more attractive country, although they had traveled morethan most girls of their age.
The road over which the auto-bus rolled was wide and well oiled--asplendid automobile track. But only one private equipage passed them onthe ride to Ardmore. That car came along, going the same way asthemselves, just as they reached the first of the row of facultydwellings.
There was but one passenger in the car--a girl; and she was packedaround with baggage in a most surprising way.
"Oh!" gasped Helen, in Ruth's ear, "I guess there goes one of the realfancy girls--the kind that sets the pace at college."
Ruth noticed that Miss Dexter and Miss Purvis craned their necks to seethe car and the girl, and she ventured to ask who she was.
"I can't tell you," Miss Dexter said briskly. "I never saw her before."
"Oh! Perhaps, then, she isn't going to the college."
"Yes; she must be. This road goes nowhere else. But she is a freshman,of course."
"An eccentric, I fancy," drawled Miss Purvis. "You must know that eachfreshman class is bound to have numbered with it some most surprisingindividuals. _Rarae aves_, as it were."
Miss Dexter laughed. "But the corners are soon rubbed off and theirpeculiarities fade into the background. When I was a freshman, thereentered a woman over fifty, with perfectly white hair. She was a _dear_;but, of course, she was an anomaly at college."
"My!" exclaimed Helen. "What did she want to go to college for?"
"The poor thing had always wanted to go to college. When she was youngthere were few women's colleges. And she had a big family to help, andfinally a bedridden sister to care for. So she remained faithful to herhome duties, but each year kept up with the graduating class of a localpreparatory school. She was really a very well educated and brightwoman; only peculiar."
"And what happened when she came to Ardmore?" asked Ruth, interested,"is she still here?"
"Oh, no. She remained only a short time. She found, she said, that hermind was not nimble enough, at her age, to keep up with the classes.Which was very probably true, you know. Unless one is constantly engagedin hard mental labor, one's mind must get into ruts by the time one isfifty. But she was very lovely, and quite popular--while she lasted."
Helen was more interested just then in the row of cottages occupied bythe members of the faculty, and here strung along the left side of thehighway. They were pretty houses, set in pretty grounds.
"Oh, look, Helen!" cried Ruth, suddenly.
"The lake!" responded Helen.
The dancing blue waters of Lake Remona were visible for a minute betweentwo of the houses. Ruth, too, caught a glimpse of the small island whichraised its hilly head in the middle of the lake.
"Is that Bliss Island?" she inquired of Miss Dexter.
"Yes. You can see it from here. That doesn't belong to the college."
"No?" said Ruth, in surprise: "But, of course, the girls can go there?"
"It is 'No Man's Land,' I believe. Belongs to none of the estatessurrounding the lake. We go there--yes," Miss Dexter told her. "TheStone Face is there."
"What is that, please?" asked Ruth, interested. "What is the StoneFace?"
"A landmark, Miss Fielding. That Stone Face was quite an important spotlast May--wasn't it, Purvis?" the senior asked the other girl.
"Oh, goodness me, yes!" said Miss Purvis. "Don't mention it. Think whatit has done to our Kappa Alpha."
"What do you suppose ever became of that girl?" murmured Miss Dexter,thoughtfully.
"I can't imagine. It was a sorry time, take it all in all. Let's nottalk of it, Merry. Our sorority has a setback from which it will neverrecover."
All this was literally Greek to Ruth, of course. Nor did she listen withany attention. There were other things for her and Helen to beinterested in, for the main building of the college had come into view.
They had been gradually climbing the easy slope of Coll
ege Hill from theeast. The main edifice of Ardmore did not stand upon the summit of theeminence. Behind and above the big, winged building the hill rose to awooded, rounding summit, sheltering the whole estate from the northwinds.
Just upon the edge of the forest at the top was an octagon-shapedobservatory. Ruth had read about it in the Year Book. From the balconyof this observatory one could see, on a clear day, to the extreme westend of Lake Remona--quite twenty-five miles away.
The newcomers, however, were more interested at present in the bigbuilding which faced the lake, half-way down the southern slope ofCollege Hill, and which contained the hall and classrooms, as well asthe principal offices. The beautiful campus was in front of thisbuilding.
"All off for Dare and Dorrance," shouted the stage driver, stopping hisvehicle.
The driveway here split, one branch descending the hill, while the mainthread wound on past the front of the main building. Ruth and Helenscrambled down with their bags.
"Good-bye," said Miss Dexter smiling on them. "Perhaps I shall see youwhen you come over to the registrar's office. We seniors have to do thehonors for you freshies."
Miss Purvis, too, bade them a pleasant good-bye. The chums set off downthe driveway. On their left was the great, sandstone, glass-roofed bulkof the gymnasium, and they caught a glimpse of the fenced athletic fieldbehind it.
Ahead were the two big dormitories upon this side of the campus--Dareand Dorrance Halls. The driveway curved around to the front of thesebuildings, and now the private touring car the girls had before noticed,came shooting around from the lake side of the dormitories, passing Ruthand Helen, empty save for the chauffeur.
"Goodness!" exclaimed Helen. "I wonder if that dressy girl with all thegoods and chattels is bunked in _our_ dormitory?"
"'Our' dormitory, no less!" laughed Ruth. "Do you feel as much at homealready as _that_?"
"Goodness! No. I'm only trying to make myself believe it. Ruth, what ane-_nor_-mous place this is! I feel just as small as--as a little mousein an elephant's stall."
Ruth laughed, but before she could reply they rounded the corner of thebuilding nearest to the campus and saw the group of girls upon its broadporch, the stranger at the foot of the steps, and the heap of baggagepiled where the chauffeur had left it.
"Hello!" May MacGreggor said, aloud, "here are a couple more kittens.Look at the pretty girl with the brown eyes and hair. And thesmart-looking, black-eyed one. Now! _here_ are freshies after my ownheart."
Edith Phelps refused to be called off from the girl and the baggage,however. She said coolly:
"I really don't know what you will do with all that truck, MissFielding. The rooms at Dare are rather small. You could not possibly getall those bags and the trunk--and certainly not that hat-box--into oneof these rooms."
"My name isn't Fielding," said the strange girl, paling now, but whetherfrom anger or as a forerunner to tears it would have been hard to tell.Her face was not one to be easily read.
"Your name isn't _Fielding_?" gasped Edie Phelps, while the latter'sfriends burst into laughter. "'R. F.'! What does that stand for, pray?"
At this moment the fleshy girl who had been all this time in thebackground on the porch, flung herself forward, burst through the group,and ran down the steps. She had spied Ruth and Helen approaching.
"Ruthie! Helen! _Ruth Fielding!_ Isn't this delightsome?"
The fleshy girl tried to hug both the chums from Cheslow at once. EdiePhelps and the rest of the girls on the porch gazed and listened inamazement. Edie turned upon the girl with the heap of baggage,accusingly.
"You're a good one! What do you mean by coming here and fooling us allin this way? What's your name?"
"Rebecca Frayne--if you think you have a right to ask," said the newgirl, sharply.
"And you're not the canned drama authoress?"
"I don't know what you mean, I'm sure," said Rebecca Frayne. "But I_would_ like to know what I'm to do with this baggage."
Ruth had come to the foot of the steps now with Helen and the fleshygirl, whom the chums had hailed gladly as "Jennie Stone." The girl ofthe Red Mill heard the speech of the stranger and noted her woebegoneaccent. She turned with a smile to Rebecca Frayne.
"Oh! I know about that," she said. "Just leave your trunk and bags hereand put your card and the number of your room on them. The men will bealong very soon to carry them up for you. I read that in the Year Book."
"Thank you," said Rebecca Frayne.
The group of sophomores and freshmen on the porch opened a way for theBriarwood trio to enter the house, and said never a word. Jennie Stonewas, as she confessed, grinning broadly.