“You’ll have some, won’t you?” demanded Beth, offering the flowers to this stranger, as she had to Molly Granger. “I have so many of them!”
Then she realized that the freckled girl’s eyes were blue. A shadow seemed to lift from them as she smiled. Whereas they had been dusky before, they shone as she looked first at the flowers and then at Beth.
“Oh, thank you!” she said, and her voice was delightfully gentle—“cultured,” Beth would have said, had that expression not so badly fitted the strange girl’s appearance. She wore a very odd combination of garments.
Her smile and her speech repaid Beth for her act. The freckled-faced girl crossed the cabin—she walked gracefully—and sat down upon a divan with the flowers. Before Beth turned back to her new friend, Molly Granger, the blue eyes had become clouded again and the tall figure of the girl drooped over the handful of flowers. Beth whispered to Molly:
“I wonder who she is?”
“Haven’t the first idea,” said the jolly girl, carelessly.
“Do you think she is going to school with us?”
“To Rivercliff? I should say not!” gasped Molly. “Say! you don’t know what you’re up against there, Beth. Why, we girls of Rivercliff stand for the ‘acme of style.’ The only magazines we read are the fashion magazines—and we only look at the pictures in those. Maude Grimshaw could wear diamonds to each class recitation—and royal ermine, I presume, too—whatever that is,” and Molly laughed.
“Oh!” exclaimed Beth, greatly taken aback.
“Only, you see, Miss Hammersly won’t have it. She is for plain frocks in school. What the girls wear in the evenings or on holidays does not so much bother her. We’re all supposed to be from families who roll in wealth—whatever that may mean,” and Molly giggled again.