It was now nearly nine o’clock. She understood that, during term time, at least, the freshman class were to be in bed at nine; and even the seniors must have their lights out at ten o’clock.
She read the list of rules through carefully. They did not seem hard, or arbitrary. Miss Prentice had been strict, indeed. To Nancy these “commandments” seemed easily kept.
There were two small desks in the room. Nancy examined the one upon her own side of the study and found only stationery, blank books, pencils, and pen and ink. There were no books.
But she ventured to look in the other desk, which was not locked, and saw that here were several text-books, evidently to be studied by the freshmen this first year.
In each book was written the name of Cora Rathmore. It was an erect, angular handwriting, and somehow Nancy drew from it that she would not like the owner of the books.
And yet she wanted to like her. Nancy longed for a real chum. She wished that her suspicions might prove to be unfounded, and that her roommate might be a jolly, open-hearted girl who would like her, and——
“Well! perhaps you don’t know that that is my desk?” snapped a voice suddenly, behind her.
Nancy dropped the book, startled. She wheeled to see confronting her, just within the room, the black-eyed, thin-faced girl who had seemed on the train to be Grace Montgomery’s chief friend.
“Well! haven’t you got anything to say?” demanded the sharp-voiced girl.
“Why, I wondered what our books were going to be like——”