CHAPTER XII
FINDING HER PLACE
In each corridor was a set of the Japanese gongs, and Beth Baldwin lay awake the next morning and listened to the electrically rung bells beginning at the top of the great house and in both wings, and repeated all down the line. They were mellow bells and pleasant to hear—and Beth did not mind rising at seven o’clock.
Although lessons did not begin until Monday, and not more than half the girls had yet arrived, the discipline of the school began on this Saturday morning. Breakfast was at eight; prayers three-quarters of an hour later. After this general gathering in the general hall, Beth found her way to the office, and to her first interview with the principal of Rivercliff.
Miss Hammersly was of small stature like her mother. But there was scarcely anything else in the principal’s appearance, Beth thought, that reminded the new pupil of the stern and military madam.
Miss Hammersly had curly hair, it is true, as had her mother. Possibly she might have been very pretty as a girl; but the duties and trials of her position had marred her forehead with lines of care, and had tinged her hair with gray. She had very bright eyes like the madam’s own; but they often softened and became dreamy as she spoke—the eyes of a truly imaginative person.
Imagination was the root of Miss Hammersly’s success. Had she not possessed it, and in abundance, she could never have brought this great school (and that twenty years before) to a standard of excellence quite remarkable.
Fortunately, she had obtained the patronage of wealthy people from the start. Without sacrificing her standard of excellence that put her graduates considerably above those from other preparatory schools of the State, Miss Hammersly managed to satisfy the parents of girls on whom much more money than was good for them was spent.
Not that all her pupils’ parents were like Maude Grimshaw’s. Miss Hammersly had to coax Maude and her kind along the thorny paths of learning. Yet some of the brightest girls at the school were daughters of extremely wealthy people. Wealth was not a barrier which it was impossible to hurdle!
“I wrote to your principal at the Hudsonvale high school,” Miss Hammersly said to Beth Baldwin, “and he gave me an excellent report of you. He likewise tells me that you are striving to earn a part of the money to pay for your courses here at Rivercliff. Is this so, Miss Baldwin?”
“Yes, Miss Hammersly,” Beth said, rather flutteringly.