“Yes.”
“Why—how odd! She knew I was going away. I bade her good-bye.”
“Of course, you can imagine no reason for her treating you so now?”
“None at all. Unless she may have found somebody else to amuse her. I do not really think,” confessed Beth, flushing again, and dimpling, “that it was my work she cared for so much as my chatter. She likes to be amused.”
Miss Hammersly smiled—yet her gravity returned instantly. “Very well,” she said, tapping on her desk with her pencil in a thoughtful way. “You may go, Beth.”
Beth continued at times to wonder about Mrs. Severn’s refusal to see her when she called. That she could not understand. She believed that the foreign maid did not like her and might have influenced Mrs. Severn against Beth herself by some means, although the girl could not imagine how.
The opening of a new school year is like the picking up of scattered stitches with a knitting needle. Not only must the mind become attuned to lessons and to discipline again, but one’s former friends must be greeted, new friendships made, and—unfortunately—old enmities and feuds attended to.
Rivalries always will exist where youths congregate—in school, or elsewhere. The very system of education followed at Rivercliff fostered rivalries. And a healthy competition between students is always of benefit.
Warped and selfish natures, however, can never enter into any struggle and play the game with fairness. The “give and take” of the playground can never please these.
Although Miss Hammersly and her instructors watched the two hundred and more girls at Rivercliff School as closely as was wise, they could not foresee all feuds nor could they break them up when once started. Maude Grimshaw and her friends continued at times to vent upon Beth their spleen; and occasionally they succeeded in ruffling the placid surface of Beth’s life.