“Of course, if you like that kind,” retorted Henrietta. “Come on, Hazel. Let’s stand on the railing and see if the old ’bus is on the way. I don’t have to be dignified any more.”
Ten minutes later, a young woman descended from the timeworn hack. As she paid the driver, she stood in a patch of sunlight. From the veranda she was plainly visible and rather more than sixty eager young eyes, with no intention of rudeness on their owners’ part, took in every detail of the new teacher’s neat costume and dwelt pleasurably on her very attractive countenance. But suddenly there was a most remarkable commotion on that veranda. Five girls were scrambling down the steps, regardless of seated schoolmates, and five joyful voices were shrieking:
“It’s Miss Blossom! It is! It is! It’s our Miss Blossom! Our own Miss Blossom!”
“And this,” cried Mabel, triumphantly, “is the Flower we get!”
Much to the new teacher’s surprise and bewilderment, she was seized and hugged and kissed and squeezed by five excited girls.
“Well, I declare,” said she, when she could get a good look at them. “I wondered if this school always welcomed new teachers this way. If it isn’t Bettie, and Jean and Marjory and Henrietta and Mabel! Isn’t this great. And I thought I was going to be all alone among strangers. This is certainly too good to be true. Jean, you look just the same and good enough to eat. Bettie, you’re taller and plumper too—you’re looking fine. Marjory, you little mite; you aren’t as big as you were the last time I saw you—are they abusing you at this place? Here’s Henrietta as lovely as ever—but you’re pale, my dear. And Mabel—Why, Mabel, I do believe you’re taller—and thinner. And aren’t you good looking! But you all look as sweet as peaches and cream to me.”
“If we’d all picked out the person that we wanted most to come to this place,” declared Mabel earnestly, “that person would have been you.”
Every one liked Miss Blossom, the pleasant young woman who had spent a summer in Lakeville and had played in Dandelion Cottage with Jean, Bettie, Marjory and Mabel; and had later paid them a visit at Pete’s Patch, where she had met pretty Henrietta.
Never was teacher more popular. Before long, almost every girl in the school was completely in love with the charming young woman. And now, some of the girls who had listened most credulously to Gladys’s unpleasant tales about the Lakeville children, began, little by little, to doubt these tales. Miss Blossom was so very attractive, so genuinely good, so admirable in every way, that it couldn’t be possible that she would like those four Michigan girls if Laura’s tales were entirely true. And there was Henrietta, too, evidently firm in her belief in Marjory’s honesty. Surely if those two really particular persons considered Marjory a nice child, perhaps she wasn’t as black as she appeared to be painted.
The next dancing evening, Victoria Webster delighted Marjory by inviting her to two-step and Debbie Clark asked her for a waltz.