Elma flushed and then said a little awkwardly—“This is Miss Boyd, and this Miss Nevins, and—I don’t know all the names yet.”
“You have more new scholars than we.” Then she made a stiff little bow and turned away to her own group.
“Girls, what do you think? Why, I nearly fainted with surprise. ‘Looks is often deceiving.’ That girl I thought a princess in disguise is Miss Boyd. Why she has airs and graces enough to amaze you. If her mother is like that, will we ever dare to ask her to darn our stockings?”
“Miss Boyd!” exclaimed a chorus of voices.
“Well, it’s good we have learned the fact at once so we shall not make any blunders. She’ll be a sort of charity scholar working for her board and training. Of course we shan’t have anything to do with her as she isn’t in our set. Though it wouldn’t be so bad but for the mother.”
“That’s real snobbish, Louie,” said a girl.
“Well, I don’t know, you have a right to choose your friends, and I heard Mrs. Dane say something about their being very poor.”
“Well, she’s stylish and she has an air, and Mrs. Barrington wouldn’t take in any one objectionable. If my father should die I might be glad to have some one take me in, and I expect to teach when I am through. You see father has four more to educate.”
“Well, Mattie Vincent, you can make a bosom friend of her for all that I care.”
“Oh girls, don’t let’s quarrel about her when we have just come and are glad to see each other. I dare say Miss Boyd wont trouble us.”