"A boarder's a boarder!"
When the girls returned to the Cowslip Room, they found their new companion with emptied box putting the last of her possessions into her drawers.
"Look here, Avelyn Watson," said Laura. "We've been talking you over. Although you go home for the week end, you're still a boarder, and at Silverside boarders are a very different thing from day girls, as you'll soon find out. If you've had two whole terms away from those Hawthorners, just forget them, and consider yourself entirely one of us. If you do that, we'll count you on our side; but if you've anything to do with day girls, we'll cut you dead."
"I don't quite understand," returned Avelyn.
"You soon will!" said Janet significantly.
"I advise you to think it over," added Laura.
CHAPTER II
An Invasion
The changes which were taking place this term at Silverside certainly marked a new era in its traditions. Up till now it had been essentially a boarding school. There had, indeed, been day girls, who had shared the classes and some of the games, but they were in the minority, both in numbers and in influence. They had had no part in the various guilds and societies, and had been made by the boarders to feel that they were inferior beings who did not count. The mistresses, themselves resident, had been accustomed to view the boarders as the more important factors, and arranged everything to suit their convenience. It had been the unwritten code of the school that to be a boarder meant to procure preferential treatment.
Miss Thompson, however, was a level-headed woman, who marched with the times. When the opportunity arose of acquiring the connection of The Hawthorns, the large day school at the other side of the town, she closed with the bargain, and decided upon an entire change of tactics. Henceforward Silverside was to be run as the girls' day school of Harlingden. The house was large, its accommodation had hitherto exceeded the needs of the pupils, there was plenty of room for added numbers, and even in war-time it would be possible to run up a corrugated iron or portable wooden building to serve as lecture hall and gymnasium. The big garden already contained several tennis courts, and there was a field close at hand which might be rented for hockey. Altogether, Miss Thompson congratulated herself that she had performed a most excellent stroke of business, and she looked forward to establishing a very flourishing educational centre, and to laying by a comfortable provision upon which she might retire when the burden of teaching grew too heavy for her to bear.