"I want to have a little personal talk with each one of you," she concluded. "Your corridor teachers will consult with me and will tell you when you are to come to me. And I hope you are to be very, very happy here with us at Shadyside."
A soft clapping of hands followed this speech, and Mrs. Eustice stepped down from the platform to be instantly surrounded by the girls who had spent other terms at the school.
After the older girls had spoken to the principal, the newcomers began to move forward. They were presented by their corridor teachers, who seemed to possess a special faculty to remember names, and here and there Mrs. Eustice recognized a girl through the association of ideas.
As Miss Lacey swept her girls forward, Ada Nansen and Ruth Gladys Royal happened to head the ranks. Mrs. Eustice put out her hand to Ada, then gazed down at her in evident astonishment.
CHAPTER XII
THE LOST TREASURE
"Diamonds," whispered Betty to Norma Guerin, who seemed depressed. "She wears three diamond rings and one sapphire and a square-cut emerald. And her wrist-watch is platinum set with diamonds."
Mrs. Eustice gazed at the soft little hand she held for a few moments, then released it. She said nothing.
"Ah, your mother wrote me of you," was the principal's greeting to the Littell girls. "You look like her, Louise. And Bobby is much like her father as I remember him."
"This is Betty Gordon," said the loyal Bobby, indicating her chum.
"Mother wrote about her, too, didn't she?"