Miss Craven flushed and it was not a pretty color.
"You like it here? Were you a new scholar this year? You look very young."
"I was fourteen in the summer. Yes, I am a new scholar. But I have grown very much at home."
Then there was a pause. Helen bethought herself of the other question.
"Yes, I like it extremely. It is such a beautiful place. I've been studying the sunset and wishing I could paint a picture of it. I've come to wish so many things of late," laughing at herself. "And I like the teachers. I don't know many of the seniors, and I am in junior B."
"I am taking some private lessons," hesitatingly.
Poor girl! She could not even have passed a junior B examination.
"There's such a pretty girl at your table. Her hair is the color one sometimes gets in a sunset, a bright gold, and yet it isn't the color so much as the curious waviness and stir all about it. It seems alive. And her complexion is beautiful, her eyes fairly laugh."
"That is Miss Mays. She isn't really in our class. She's an 'A' scholar. Every month someone new is elected for hostess. You are at the head of the table. You see that everything is served, that no one is—well, not exactly rude or awkward, but not up to the mark. And you keep a certain order."
"I spilled my coffee this morning. My spoon was in my cup and I just touched it with my cuff. I wish I could have gone through the floor or run away. But one has to learn all these nice things if one means to—to be anybody."