“Yes, indeed,” said Lorraine; “I’ll be glad to have you. Nobody ever wants to sit by me. Perhaps we can’t be together in all our classes, but the opening exercises are held in the big assembly-room, and we can sit together there.”
“All right,” said Patty, who somehow had an unaccountable feeling of loneliness at thought of the strange school. She knew she was foolish, and she tried hard to overcome it, yet she couldn’t help wishing herself back in Vernondale.
The Oliphant school was a large and handsome building, well equipped after the most modern fashion. Miss Oliphant herself received Patty, and welcomed her politely, though without cordiality. Indeed, it would have been difficult to imagine Miss Oliphant showing cordiality. She was a most dignified and important-looking personage. She held her head very high, and her cold grey eyes seemed to look right through Patty and read her very thoughts. But if Miss Oliphant did observe Patty’s dejection, she certainly made no effort to allay it.
“I am glad to see you,” she said, but her formal handshake and conventional smile did not seem to corroborate her words. “You will take your place with the rest in the assembly-room, and after the opening exercises of the morning you will be assigned to your classes.”
This was followed by a gesture of dismissal, but Patty paused long enough to ask: “May I sit next to Lorraine Hamilton?”
An expression of surprise passed over Miss Oliphant’s face, but she only said, “Certainly, if you wish to,” and then Patty rejoined Lorraine in the hall, and together they went to the assembly-room.
As it was already time for school to open, Patty had no opportunity to be introduced to any of her fellow-pupils. She looked at them, however, with a good deal of interest, and decided that notwithstanding Lorraine’s opinion of them they looked like very nice girls. Two or three in particular she picked out as looking interesting, and one dark-eyed, merry-faced girl she felt sure would be especially friendly. She even smiled pleasantly at this girl, but to her surprise her smile was not cordially returned. The girl acknowledged it by a mere nod, and looked away. Patty felt a little embarrassed, and concluded that city girls were horrid, stuck-up things, and she longed for her merry companions at the Vernondale school. Several times she found herself gazing intently at one or another of the pupils, but invariably her look was returned by a cold stare, or ignored entirely.
“I’m perfectly silly to think anything about it,” thought Patty to herself; “it’s just their way of not recognising anybody until they’ve been formally introduced. They’ll be all right after I’ve really met them. I’ve never been foolishly sensitive before, and I’m not going to begin now.”
So Patty bravely put out of her mind all thoughts of the girls’ apparent attitude toward her, and turned her attention to her school duties. She was glad to find that in most of her studies she was in the class with Lorraine, and consequently was able to sit by her all through the morning.
The Oliphant school was attended by both boarding pupils and day pupils, and at noon a hot luncheon was served for all. After the morning lessons were over the girls gathered in groups, chatting gaily while they awaited the summons to the dining-room.