CHAPTER XI
SCHOOL IN EARNEST
On Monday the real work of school began. Besides the boarding scholars, was a day-school of the young ladies and larger girls, who were either sent away or went to Aldred House. There was an excellent school for the little ones, and a very good public school, but Westchester did not take cordially to this except for the boys.
Two of the teachers had arrived on Saturday evening. Madame Meran, the French teacher, who also gave music lessons to the younger pupils, and Miss Lane, who taught Latin and German to the few who desired it, and had dreams of college life. Mrs. Aldred made no specialty of this, but some of the pupils insisted on remaining until that time. There were two divisions in the senior class, two in the junior. Helen was glad that Daisy Bell was in the B. division. She was not as gay as Roxy Mays, but there was a quality of tenderness in her that was very attractive.
She was not quite sure that she would desire to make a warm friend of Miss Mays though on Friday evening her whole heart had gone out to her. She could turn any subject into ridicule so easily, she could seize on small foibles and distort them with such a winsome grace that they were amusing at the time, but when one thought them over afterward one saw the little stings that were left behind.
It was so different from anything Helen had dreamed of. At first she thought she would have been happier going to the Hope High School and working her way through. There was a feeling that she did not truly and honestly belong in this circle of girls, many of whom had rich fathers and luxurious homes; and she wondered if some day she would come to have the careworn and unsatisfied look that Miss Lane had. Miss Lane had taught ten years, beginning when she was nineteen. So she was twenty-nine.
"And I do not believe she has ever had a lover," said Miss Mays. "She looks so."
"What kind of a look is that?" questioned someone.
"Why that discontented, hungry expression, that curious alertness, as if you were looking for something that had never come, and you were afraid never would. Girls, if I had to live until I was twenty-nine unmarried——"