"We may make coffee after lunch if we're seniors, but the kids aren't allowed any."
"You've just one minute to drink it in before the bell rings."
"Hustle up if you want to finish it."
"I'll bet a cookie you're a real sport."
"There's the bell! Don't choke or you'll blight your young career."
"We've got to scoot quick!"
"Come along with me and I'll show you where."
Irene, taken in tow by a girl with a freckled nose, was hurried along the corridor and up the stairs to the classrooms. Although she had scarcely spoken a word she had undoubtedly gained a victory, and had established her welcome among at least a section of her schoolfellows. She did not yet know their names, but names are a detail compared with personalities, and with some members of the coffee-party she felt that she might ultimately become chums.
"Don't I bless Dad for those chocs!" she thought as she took her seat at a desk. "They worked the trick. If I'd had nothing to offer that crew I might have sat out in the cold forevermore. The dark pigtail is decent enough, but if it comes to a matter of chumming give me 'Freckles' for choice."
The Villa Camellia was a high-class boarding-school for English-speaking girls whose parents were residents, permanently or temporarily, in the neighborhood of Naples. It was generally described as an Anglo-American college, for the arrangements were accommodated to suit the customs of both sides of the Atlantic. Miss Rodgers and her partner, Miss Morley, the two principals, came respectively from London and New York; one teacher had been trained in Boston, and another at Oxford, while the British section of the community included girls from South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Pupils belonging to other European races were not received, the object of the college being to preserve the nationality of girls who must of necessity be educated in a foreign land, and whose parents did not wish them to attend Italian schools. The arrangements were of course modified by the climate and by the customs of the country. Outwardly the Villa Camellia resembled a convent. Its garden was surrounded by immensely high walls edged with broken glass, and the only entrance was by the great gate, which was solemnly unlocked by old Antonio, the porter, who inspected all comers through a grille before granting them admittance. Small parties in charge of a teacher were taken at stated times for walks or excursions in the neighborhood, but no girl might ever go out unless escorted by a mistress or by her parents. The Villa Camellia was a little world in itself, and as much retired from the town of Fossato as the great, gray monastery that crowned the summit of the neighboring mountain.