ADELINA AND THE DRAMA
THE Youngest Teacher looked across the room at the new girl and tried to goad her conscience into action. New girls were her specialty. She was an expert in homesickness, a professional drier of tears and promoter of cheerfulness. When she really brought her batteries into action the most forlorn of new pupils wiped her eyes and decided that boarding-school life might have its sunny side.
Gradually the Misses Ryder and Belinda's fellow-teachers had recognised the masterly effectiveness of her system and her personality, and had shifted the responsibility of "settling" the new girls to the Youngest Teacher's shoulders. As a rule, Belinda cheerfully bowed her very fine shoulders to the burden. She knew that as an accomplished diplomat she was of surpassing value, and that her heart-to-heart relations with the pupils were of more service than her guidance in the paths of English.
She comforted the homesick, set the shy at ease, drew confidences from the reserved, restrained the extravagances of the gushing.
But on this January evening she felt a colossal indifference concerning the welfare of girls in general and of new girls in particular—a strong disinclination to assume any responsibility in regard to the girl who sat alone upon the highly ornamental Louis Quinze sofa.
The newcomer was good looking, in an overgrown, florid, spectacular fashion. Belinda took note of her thick yellow hair, her big blue eyes, her statuesque proportions. She noted, too, that the yellow hair was dressed picturesquely but untidily, that the big eyes rolled from side to side self-consciously, that the statuesque figure was incased in a too tightly laced corset.
Miss Adelina Wilson did not look promising, but her family was—so Miss Ryder had been credibly informed—an ornament to Cayuga County, and Mr. Wilson, père, who had called to make arrangements for his daughter's schooling, had seemed a gentlemanly, mild, slightly harassed man, of a type essentially American—a shrewd, successful business man, embarrassed by the responsibility of a family he could support but could not understand.
"She's my only daughter, and her mother is gone," he explained to Miss Ryder, leaving her to vague speculation concerning the manner of Mrs. Wilson's departure.
"The boys are all right. I can fix them, but Addie's different, and I guess she needs a good school and some sensible women to look after her. She's a good girl, but she has some silly notions."
Looking at Addie, Belinda accepted the theory of the silly notions, but wondered just what those notions might be. She would have to find out, sooner or later, and it might as well be sooner; so she rose, set her diplomatic lance at rest, and charged the young woman.