This bid fair to be a silent and dismal meal. All the girls had come except Betty’s roommate, and most of them, being freshmen, were in the depths of examinations and homesickness. But there was one shining exception, a very lively sophomore, who had waited till the last moment hoping to get an assignment on the campus, and then had come to Mrs. Chapin’s in the place of a freshman who had failed in her examinations.
“She had six, poor thing!” explained the sophomore to Betty, who sat beside her. “And just think! She’d had a riding horse and a mahogany desk with a secret drawer sent on from home. Wish I could inherit them along with her room. Now, my name is Mary Brooks. Tell me yours, and I’ll ask the girl on the other side and introduce you; and that will start the ball rolling.”
These energetic measures succeeded much better than Mrs. Chapin’s somewhat perfunctory remarks about the dry weather, and the whole table was soon talking busily. The two piazza girls proved to be sisters, Mary and Adelaide Rich, from Haddam, Connecticut. Betty decided that they were rather stupid and too inclined to stick together to be much fun. A tall, homely girl at the end of the table created a laugh by introducing herself as Miss Katherine Kittredge of Kankakee.
“The state is Illinois,” she added, “but that spoils the alliteration.”
“The what?” whispered Betty to the sophomore.
But Miss Brooks only laughed and said, “Wait till you’ve finished freshman English.”
Betty’s other neighbor was a pale, quiet little girl, with short hair and a drawl. Betty couldn’t decide whether she meant to be “snippy” or was only shy and offish. After she had said that her name was Roberta Lewis and her home Philadelphia, Betty inquired politely whether she expected to like college.
“I expect to detest it,” replied Miss Lewis slowly and distinctly, and spoke not another word during dinner. But though she ate busily and kept her eyes on her plate, Betty was sure that she heard all that was said, and would have liked to join in, only she didn’t know how.
The one really beautiful girl at the table was Miss Eleanor Watson. Her complexion was the daintiest pink and white, her black hair waved softly under the big hat which she had not stopped to take off, and her hazel eyes were plaintive one moment and sparkling the next, as her mood changed. She talked a good deal and very well, and it was hard to realize that she was only sixteen and a freshman. She had fitted for college at a big preparatory school in the east, and so, although she happened to be the only Denver girl in college, she had a great many friends in the upper classes and appeared to know quite as much about college customs as Miss Brooks. All this impressed Betty, who admired beauty and pretty clothes immensely. She resolved to have Eleanor Watson for a friend if she could, and was pleased when Miss Watson inquired how many examinations she had, and suggested that they would probably be in the same divisions, since their names both began with W.
The remaining girl at Mrs. Chapin’s table was not particularly striking. She had a great mass of golden brown hair, which she wore coiled loosely in her neck. Her keen grey eyes looked the world straight in the face, and her turned-up nose and the dimple in her chin gave her a merry, cheerful air. She did not talk much, and not at all about herself, but she gave the impression of being a thoroughly nice, bright, capable girl. Her name was Rachel Morrison.