“I’d want the relationship to be mighty distant if I were Bob,” laughed the girl named Mary.
“Quite so,” said the teller of the tale. “However, he went automobiling with the Montgomerys through to Chicago. And on the road he fell into some pond, or river, and he can’t swim——”
“But he can skate—beautifully,” sighed Corinne. “I hope there’ll be good skating this winter on Clinton River.”
“Me, too! And me! Oh, I adore skating!” were the chorused exclamations from the group.
Corinne now noted that Nancy had finished.
“Come! I’ve got to stow little ‘greeny’ away for the night,” she said, pinching Nancy’s plump cheek. “Come on, kid! It’ll soon be bedtime for first-readers.”
Nancy did not mind this playful reference to her juvenile state, it was said so pleasantly. She followed Corinne docilely up the broad flight into the west wing of the great building. Once it had been a private residence; but it was big enough to be called a castle.
The rooms on the lower floor had not been much changed when Pinewood Hall became a preparatory school for girls. But above the first story the old partitions had been ripped out and the floors cut up on each side of the main stairways into a single broad, T-shaped corridor and many reasonably spacious bedrooms and studies.
One walked out of the corridor into the studies; the bedrooms were back of these dens, with broad windows, overlooking the beautiful grounds.
On the first dormitory floor were the instructors’ rooms, for the most part. One lady teacher only slept on the second floor; above, the seniors and juniors governed their own dormitories. By the time the girls came to their last two years at Pinewood Hall, Madame Schakael believed that they should be governed by honor solely.