“Spring will never get here,” groaned Marjory.
“We aren’t allowed to go to town at all,” said Jean, “except sometimes to lectures and concerts at the Theological Seminary, and there’s a regular shopping day sometimes. Cora says it isn’t a bit like it was here last year—a great many things have been changed. All the teachers, for one thing. There’s a secret. Something happened, but she says that Doctor Rhodes took all the old girls into his office as soon as they came and made them promise not to tell the new girls—or anybody.”
“The teachers,” said Henrietta, “are a bunch of freaks and as near as I can make out most of them are related to Doctor Rhodes. I had physical geography from his poor old cousin, Emily Rhodes; and a music lesson from his daughter, Julia Rhodes.”
“His daughter-in-law, Mrs. Henry Rhodes, teaches painting and needlework,” said Jean. “She’s rather pleasant, I think.”
“Anyway,” said Mabel, “that French teacher isn’t related. And I don’t think Miss Woodruff is.”
Marjory sat up suddenly and giggled.
“What’s the joke?” demanded Henrietta.
“Mabel made friends with Miss Woodruff this morning in mathematics. She is just about the tallest and stoutest person you ever did see. Mabel asked her if she hadn’t been teaching a great many years. Miss Woodruff said, ‘Why, no; how old do you think I am?’ Mabel looked her up and down carefully and said: ‘About seventy-five.’”
“Oh, Mabel!”
“Well,” confessed Mabel, “I honestly didn’t see how anybody could grow to such a size in less than seventy-five years. Why! She’s the very biggest woman I ever saw.”