Miss Arran always came in the study room, generally bringing a bit of embroidery for it was not expected that Miss Boyd should attend to the upper division with some girls older than herself. The other class were quite at the lower end of the room, ranged around the table. Miss Boyd seated herself next to Miss Nevins and patiently explained, but it was very hard to keep the girl’s attention to the subject in hand. She thought she had never seen any one so utterly indifferent and with so little ambition. There had been stolid, slow-witted girls among the operatives in Laconia in the grammar school, but they really desired to learn.
Miss Davis paused the next day to say—
“Miss Boyd your good training does begin to take effect. Miss Nevins had such excellent recitations today that I was pleased beyond measure. You are way up in Mrs. Barrington’s good graces, I can tell you.”
Lilian flushed at the commendation.
For the next hour the girls could have a social time in each others’ rooms or the library. There was a crowd of eager talkers with Miss Rosewald.
“Yes,” she was saying. “I ran over the housekeeper just as she was coming out of Rinsey’s. Zay will be here by the 20th, and she’s coming right to school, for the Major and Mrs. Crawford are going to the Mediterranean. The German doctors and the baths did wonders for her and she can walk without crutches. A friend is to take them on his yacht and they’ll be home at Christmas, and there will be Vincent’s graduation. Dear me! I hope I can go up to West Point. They say the balls are splendid. The Crawford house is to be all done over, and no doubt there will be a big housewarming there.”
“Oh, it will be just delightful to have Zay back again. I suppose that’s the reason Miss White was put in with Buttons and that room fixed up so nice. Mrs. Barrington has had word, of course. We just need her to round out, I was going to say, the atmosphere. It’s too studious. Those Kirkland girls are going to college, dearly loved cousins, quite sufficient for themselves, and there’s that granery, yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, one who writes poetry and is too lackadaisical for anything. What we want is a rollicking, fun loving girl to start us.”
“And something’s the matter with you, Phil. Have you been crossed in love?”
Phillipa Rosewald turned scarlet. “No,” she answered, “it’s two of them and I can’t decide. One is rich and homely as a hedge fence and always says drawring and reel, but has lots of money and a fair enough family back of him. The other is handsome and oh, my! gay as a lark, but he had about run through with a fortune, and I’m afraid he will flirt now that the restraint of my serious and imposing presence is removed.”
“Serious, that’s good. Why didn’t you say severe?”