A NEW FRIEND
Lloydsboro Seminary was not an especially attractive place viewed from the outside of the high picket fence, which surrounded its entire domain. The fence itself was forbidding. Its tall pickets, sharp-pointed and close together, seemed to suggest that strict rules were to be found inside; rules like the pickets, too firm and pointed to be easily broken through or climbed over.
The building was old and weather-beaten, but in its prime the school had been one of the best in the State, and many a woman remembered it loyally in after years when she had daughters of her own to educate. So it happened that some of the pupils came long distances, and from many parts of the country, to sit at the same old desks their mothers sat at, to study the same old lessons, and to learn to love every rock and tree on the seminary grounds, because of their associations with all the warm young friendships formed there.
A group of maples and cedars stood between the seminary and the high green picket gate in front, with a score of rustic seats and wooden swings scattered about in their shade. On the east an old neglected apple orchard sloped away from the house, where during the first few weeks of school, hard juicy winesaps, russets, and bellflowers lay in hiding from the hungry schoolgirls, who searched for them in the tall grass, waving knee-deep among the trees. On the other side, the high fence separated the grounds from the closely clipped lawn of Clovercroft, one of the hospitable old homesteads of the Valley, whose wide porches and vine-covered tower made a charming picture from the western windows of the seminary.
The opening day of school was always a sort of gala occasion. No regular work could be done, for pupils were continually coming in on the various trains to be registered and assigned to classes. After chapel exercises the day pupils were at liberty to go home, but it was a time-honoured custom for them to adjourn to the apple orchard, to hold a reunion with all the last year's boarders who had returned.
The swings and seats in front of the seminary were left for the newcomers. Many a longing glance was cast toward the orchard by the strangers, who, left thus inhospitably alone, made shy advances toward acquaintance among themselves. On the morrow they, too, might be included in the friendly little groups exchanging confidences with their heads close together, and walking with their arms around each other under the gnarly old trees; but that they should be ignored the first day was as binding as the unwritten "laws of the jungle."
From her seat in the swing nearest the house, a new girl watched the others swarming out from chapel, laughing and talking and calling to those ahead to wait. The primary grades went racing through the warm morning sunshine, down to their playhouses by the spring. The seniors and juniors strolled off in opposite directions in dignified exclusiveness, to different parts of the orchard. Each group as it passed attracted the new girl's attention, but her interest centred in a dozen or more girls lingering on the front steps. Their ages seemed to range from twelve to fifteen years. They were evidently waiting for some one.
"Why don't they hurry?" asked an impatient voice. "What's the matter?"
"The matron stopped them," some one answered. "I heard her asking about some bedding that was to be sent from Locust."
It was nearly five minutes before some one interrupted a discussion that had begun, to call "Here they come!" Then a chorus of calls began most confusing to the girl in the swing, who did not know the names of the newcomers who seemed to be so popular.