“It was mine, too,” said Henrietta. “I should have known better. I just didn’t think—I never do. I’m awfully sorry.”
“Well, well,” returned Mr. Black, “I’m certainly glad you were capable enough to get to the right station. Now take hold of hands, all of you, and Bettie, you hold on to my coat like grim death. We must buy our tickets, re-check our baggage and get aboard our train.”
[CHAPTER IV—FIRST IMPRESSIONS]
Even a very unobserving person would have been able to see at a glance that Highland Hall had begun life as a private residence. Originally a big square house built of cream colored brick and generously supplied with large windows and many balconies, it was perched in solitary grandeur at the top of a broad, grassy knoll; but when it became a school red brick additions, four stories high, extended toward the north and west. An enormous and very ugly veranda stretched along the entire length of one of these additions. From it a broad flight of twelve wide steps led to the ground.
Doctor Rhodes and his family lived in part of the old mansion. His office was there on the ground floor in a room that had once been the dining room. The original parlor, a huge oblong room with a very high ceiling, and the dark and rather dingy library back of it were still unchanged.
Most of the second, third and fourth floors of the large modern wings contained bedrooms. The school rooms, music rooms and studio occupied the ground floor. New pupils always complained that there were miles and miles of dark hallways and corridors in which to get lost.
The kitchen, dining hall and laundry were in the basement.
There were no houses visible from three sides of the school building. From the fourth side, however, one could see the dark roofs of other ancient houses falling into decay, each with its huge yard, its overgrown hedge, its unkempt shrubbery. Beyond that, nearly a mile distant, the red town of Hiltonburg glistened in the sunshine.
Somewhere between five and six o’clock that September afternoon, the station hack stopped on the curved driveway in front of Highland Hall. Mr. Black and his five charges alighted. This spectacle afforded much interest to some three dozen maidens clustered in pairs and groups on the front steps and on the wide veranda. To the embarrassed newcomers these girls seemed to be all eyes. Never had the children from Lakeville encountered so many curious eyes. There couldn’t have been more than seventy-two but it seemed more like seventy-two thousand, Bettie said afterwards.
Mr. Black addressed one of the nearest groups. “Can you direct me,” he asked, “to Doctor Rhodes?”