On the other hand the girl from Higbee School stood well in her classes, and she had no black marks against her. No teacher had been forced to admonish Nancy, and Corinne Pevay had a cheerful word for her and a smile whenever Nancy crossed her path.
And yet the girl could not be happy. Her own mates—the freshmen—seemed afraid of her. Or, at least, some of them did. And if Nancy was to have chums she must find them, of course, in her own class.
For the first few weeks of a school year the new girls gradually get settled—both in their studies and in their friendships. Had Nancy by good chance been paired with a different girl—with a girl who had not already formed her own associates—matters might have gone along much more smoothly.
But Cora disliked her from the start. And the black-eyed girl was sharp enough to see that accusing Nancy of being “a nobody” for some reason hurt her roommate more than anything else.
Therefore, being of a malicious disposition, Cora continued to harp upon this, until she had spread through the school the suspicion that Nancy had come to Pinewood Hall under unusual circumstances. Nobody knew where she had come from. She never spoke of her people, nor of where she had lived.
And, of course, this was quite true. Nancy did not want to tell about her life at Higbee School. Fortunately no girl from Higbee had ever come to Pinewood Hall before, and the girl thought that her secret was safe.
Cora and her friends might suspect, but they really knew nothing about Nancy’s past life. Already some of the girls had received boxes from home—those delightful surprise boxes that give such a zest to boarding-school life. Nancy never received a letter, even.
So, Nancy could not be very happy at Pinewood Hall.
Other girls went around in recreation hours with their arms about each other’s waists, chattering with all the cheerfulness of blackbirds. They had “secrets” together and whispered about them in corners. There were little, harmless gatherings in the dormitories, sometimes after curfew; but Nancy had no part in these girlish dissipations.
Perhaps it was her own fault. But the girl, who felt herself ostracized, feared a rebuff. As Madame Schakael had said to Corinne, Nancy was one of the sensitive ones. And the sensitive girl at boarding school is bound to have a hard time unless she very quickly makes a lasting friendship, or becomes a popular member of some group of her schoolfellows right at the start.