"Then she ought to have," said Salome, "to look after her troublesome young charges. Never mind. Anybody will do."
The girl disappeared, returning in a few minutes with the desired senior.
"Hallo, Salome!" the new-comer exclaimed. "What brings you in this direction so soon?"
"A new girl. Kitty Despard, all the way from Australia. Kitty, this is Hilary, one of your seniors," and after exchanging a few more words Salome departed.
Kitty's new acquaintance was a rather small, slight girl with soft, fair hair, pale, irregular features and dark, hazel eyes. Her manner, as she showed Kitty her cubicle and told her where to put her things, was courteous and considerate, but quiet and self-contained. Kitty had hardly finished unpacking before a bell rang and they went down to tea in a big, cheery room, containing four or five long tables. The new girl was rather dazed by the chatter and laughter and crowd of new faces. She gathered little save that most of the girls were smaller than herself, but that there was either a mistress or a senior girl at the head and foot of each table. She herself sat next to Hilary, who presided at the foot of one of them.
The rest of the evening seemed still more dreamlike. There was a brief interview with the house mistress, Miss Carslake, who welcomed her kindly, shook hands rather limply, asked her a number of questions in a pleasant voice, and gave her hints on what she might expect to find in her new life.
At eight o'clock another bell rang, and she was astonished when somebody remarked, "Chapel." She thought vaguely of Wesleyans and Baptists, and looked to see what the others were doing. Everybody made for the vestibule and donned hats and wrappers of some sort. Hilary considerately took Kitty in charge again.
"Get your hat. It's chapel. We only have morning chapel usually—just a short service—but we always have evening chapel the first and last night of term."
They crossed the quad with the others to the pretty little chapel that adjoined the school building, meeting converging streams of girls from the other houses. Kitty, as if in a dream, knelt, rose, and sat with the rest of the two hundred and fifty girls, but there was something strangely impressive in the hearty chanting of the solitary psalm, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills ... the Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in," and the still heartier rendering of the hymn:
Lord receive us with Thy blessing,
Once again assembled here.