“Yes’m, Miss Liv—er—I mean, Miss Preens, but it was awful important. Please excuse me this time and I will try not to again offend.”
Such penitence was in the brown eyes that glanced beseechingly up at the spindlingly tall monitress that for the moment Miss Preens was almost inclined to accept the apology. Herding forty girls to the study hall and being sure that none of them whispered was rather of a task, and, right at that very moment she was sure that she saw two heads near the front suspiciously close together, and so she pushed through the ranks, at least a head and a half taller than any girl in the school.
“What a wife she’d make for an ogre!” Merry turned, laughing eyes, toward the girl following her.
It happened to be one of the seniors, and a blue ribbon one at that, and so the humorous suggestion was not met with appreciation.
Merry’s mental comment was, “When I get to be a senior, at least I’ll be human.”
Just as they were entering the study hall for a brief moment Betty Byrd was close. “I just can’t wait till tomorrow,” the youngest member of the S. S. C. whispered.
Merry put a warning finger on her lips. Betty glanced up and saw the sharp eyes of Miss Preen turning in their direction.
“Poor Miss Preen!” Merry thought as she sank into her seat and drew a French book from her desk preparing to study. “I wouldn’t be her, not for a million!”
CHAPTER II.
SNOW MAIDENS
The picturesque village of Sunnyside had one main road, wide, elm-shaded, which began at a beautiful hill-encircled lake, and which from there climbed gently up through the business part of town to the residential, passed the orphanage, the fine old seminary for girls and the even older academy for boys, and then led through wide-open spaces, fertile farms, other scattered villages and on to Dorchester, a large, thriving city forty miles away. Merry Lee’s father was a builder and contractor whose offices were in Dorchester, but whose home was a comfortable old colonial house on the main thoroughfare in the village of Sunnyside.