Nancy piloted them back to South, and as Sally May's luggage had not come she was fitted out with what she needed. Nancy went to the housekeeper's room for soap and a toothbrush—Mrs. Bronson kept a supply for such emergencies; Josephine donated her best crêpe nightie—in which Sally May was presently to look quite lost, so large was it; and Judith got out her newest and prettiest kimono.
"You'll feel as if you'd been here all your life by the time you get all these and my old bath slippers on," said Jane saucily. "Come into my room as soon as you're arrayed in all this glory—there's a little cake left and I'm going to do my best to find some ginger-ale."
Judith was brushing out her pretty brown hair and looking rather solemnly at her reflection in the mirror when shrieks of delight testified to the arrival of some one, who, to judge by the commotion, must be very popular.
"Cathy, you darling, are you really to be ours? What precious luck!—Josephine and Jane, and—yes—two new girls—Judith Benson in twenty-five and Sally May Forsythe in twenty-one."
There was a knock at the door and a clear voice said, "May I come in?"
Judith opened her door and straightway lost her heart when the newcomer smiled a welcome. Catherine was adored by every beauty-loving girl in the School, for she had beauty of a rare type—a slender, graceful body, a well-set little head crowned with a big braid of softly waving dark brown hair, and haunting, black-lashed Irish blue eyes.
"Isn't she simply lovely?" whispered Nancy after Catherine had gone to her own room. "And she's just as good as she looks. Oh, goody, I'm so glad she's our prefect!"
Miss Marlowe put her head in the door to say good-night just before the "Lights out" bell rang, and then Judith was at last alone. She was bewildered by the mass of new impressions; the twinkling of the trainman's lanterns as she looked out of her berth in the early morning; the cold, chilly touch of homesickness when she followed the porter out of the Pullman; Aunt Nell's welcome; the exciting shopping; the first glimpse of the school set high on the hill; Aunt Nell's little sermon; Nancy's merry eyes; the Babel of voices in the gymnasium; Catherine Ellison's beautiful face; her mother's proud good-bye, "I can trust you, Judy, darling—"
Suddenly Judith realized that Mother and Daddy were many hundreds of miles away, that Aunt Nell had gone, and that she was alone, alone with these hundreds of strangers. The thought terrified her: the ache in her throat grew intolerable: she would have to sob and disgrace herself.
There was a rustling of paper on the other side of the partition, and then—