“I believe,” continued Doctor Rhodes, “that you have all faithfully kept that secret, which is still a secret from the new girls. This is it. I am not the Doctor Charles Rhodes, whose name is in our catalogue and has been in our catalogue for nearly thirty years. I am his cousin, Doctor Julius Rhodes; a physician, not a Doctor of Laws—you have noticed the letters LL.D. after my cousin’s name.
“Some of you will remember that Doctor Rhodes was ill last June at Commencement time. He died in July. I was his nearest relative; and, in time, when his affairs are finally settled, I shall inherit his estate. The lawyers considered it unwise to announce Dr. Rhodes’s death at that time, though of course there were the usual notices in the papers. But no changes were made in the catalogue and no formal notices were sent to the pupils; as it seemed almost certain that any such announcement would cause the attendance for the following year to fall off, perhaps to the lasting detriment of the school. The lawyers suggested that I take charge of the school and keep it going, particularly as Doctor Charles Rhodes had expressed a wish to that effect.
“I was handicapped in one way. The courts were not yet ready to hand over to me the surplus fund of school money in the bank. I had very little capital to put in and certainly no experience with boarding schools for girls. I was not a teacher. Perhaps you have noticed that your instructors, with two exceptions, are members of my own family. They very kindly consented to help me through this first year; and I think you will agree that they have proved fairly good teachers, even if that hasn’t always been their regular profession. Miss Woodruff, of course, and Miss Blossom are regular teachers. I thought I might venture to afford two.
“I think you will agree that my most serious blunder was the engaging of Madame Bolande—I assure you that I didn’t see her first. Except for that one regrettable mistake, everything has gone so well and so prosperously, that I have decided to tell the whole truth now (and take the consequences if there are any) instead of waiting, as my lawyers advised, until my cousin’s estate is fully settled. I shall feel happier with everything quite open and above board. That’s all, except that I feel much indebted to the young ladies who have so kindly kept my secret to the present time.”
Of course, for a day or two after that, Highland Hall buzzed again with excitement and the newer girls besieged the older ones with questions.
“Doctor Charles Rhodes,” explained Sallie, “was a perfectly lovely old man. Everybody just adored him; he was so gentle and sweet. He hadn’t any family of his own left; but he seemed, some way, as if he were everybody’s grandfather. He was wonderfully good to me and to poor old Abbie too. In his time we had our pocket money just as the other girls did—out of his own pocket, I suppose. If Abbie had been bright to start with she wouldn’t have been the forlorn creature that she is now. He gave me every chance to learn; and I’m sure that Abbie had the same chances but was too stupid to take them. Probably no one but a kind man would have kept Abbie; she’s never been good for very much.
“But when this new Rhodes family came, it was all so different. At first, I didn’t like Doctor Julius Rhodes at all—or any of his family. But after awhile I began to see that things were not so terribly easy for them. The housekeeping job proved awfully hard on poor Mrs. Rhodes and she just sort of stiffened up under it in a queer way. I guess she’s a good deal of a mummy anyway and this job makes her more so. She is harder on Abbie and on me than the old housekeeper used to be; but at that her looks are the worst part of her.”
“Well,” agreed Henrietta, “she can’t help her looks—that’s the way she was made.”
“I like Dr. Julius Rhodes much better than I did at first,” continued Sallie. “I hated him at first. Of course he doesn’t look one bit like his cousin; that was one reason. In the next place, I hated having those people flock down here in my dear old Doctor Rhodes’s own home; and in the third place, it didn’t seem quite right to me to keep a thing like that hidden—to let people go on supposing that it was still Doctor Charles Rhodes when it wasn’t. But I overheard Dr. Rhodes and one of those lawyers talking in the office one day and I gathered then that Doctor Rhodes didn’t like keeping that secret himself—he wanted to tell, but the lawyer said it wasn’t good policy. And now, even if this Doctor Rhodes isn’t a lovely, gentle, sweet old man like Doctor Charles, I think he makes a very good head for this school. And when he is able to handle the school funds, there will be more regular teachers and he won’t have to work his family quite so hard.”
“At that,” said Maude, “the family isn’t so bad. Mrs. Henry is a dear, everybody says that old Miss Emily is terribly thorough and Miss Julia certainly makes the girls practise. And you all know, I’d gladly swap Miss Woodruff for any one of them—I still have seven pages of American History to learn by heart and recite.”