“Why, not exactly,” said Patty, smiling; “I’m chums with everybody. But I’ll tell you what: you’re new to-day, and of course you feel a little strange. Now it happens that the girl who usually sits next to me at luncheon isn’t here, so you come and sit by me, and then you’ll get a good start.”
Patty remembered how glad she would have been had someone talked to her like that on the first day of her arrival at the school, and she put Elise in Lorraine’s place, glad that she could so favour her.
During luncheon Patty entertained the new pupil with an account of her funny experience with Brownie that morning, and she found in Elise an appreciative listener to her recital.
At the same time, Patty could not quite make up her mind as to the social status of the new girl.
Elise seemed to be of the wealthy and somewhat supercilious class typified in the Oliphant school by Gertrude Lyons and Maude Carleton.
And yet Elise seemed far more simple and natural than those artificial young women, and Patty concluded that in spite of the fact that she belonged to one of New York’s best-known families she was unostentatious, and in no sense “stuck-up.”
For with all her sophistication and general effect of affluence, Patty seemed to see an undercurrent of dissatisfaction of some sort.
Not that Elise was sad, or low-spirited. Far from it, she was merry, frivolous, and quite inclined to make fun of her fellow-pupils.
“Did you ever see anything so ridiculous as Gertrude Lyons?” she asked of Patty. “She is so airy and conceited, and yet she’s nothing after all.”
Although Patty did not especially like Gertrude, this challenge roused her sense of justice, and she said: “Oh, Gertrude is all right; and I don’t think it is nice to criticise strangers like that.”