Betty felt a throb at her heart. It was wonderful to come to school in a house like this. Her eyes were still fixed on the old building, lit up with the afternoon sun, as Miss Drury spoke.
“Yes,” her voice was quiet and seemed to match with the scene, as though she, too, saw what Betty saw, and understood, for all her talk of camping and for all the modern breeziness of her manner. “This is St. Benedick’s. Miss Carey likes to keep the grounds just as they were. The playing-fields are right away from the house, though we use the grounds, of course, for Guide practices.”
The procession of girls had wound by this time in orderly fashion along the drive, between the old-world garden lawns and beds, and through the great doors which seemed—so Betty thought—glad to open to them. Then, as she followed on herself, the very last of the line, she forgot the first impressions that the old house had given her. For Miss Drury was addressing an individual in a starched cap and apron who stood at the foot of the wide stairway.
“The only new girl; Betty Carlyle, Nurse. I will hand her over to you while the others go straight to the cloakrooms.”
Betty found herself, therefore, ascending the stairway step by step with a sudden longing for a twin on either side. The sense of dignity and mystery that the first sight of the old house had given her was gone now. There were echoing sounds of voices and laughter, greetings and meetings down below, in which she had no share.
“Your room is number three, and you’ll share it with Mona and Geraldine and Irene,” Nurse was remarking in a tone which seemed as starchy as her uniform. “And so I trust you are not an untidy girl.”
Three minutes afterwards Betty, having tiptoed along passages which seemed scented both with the old-fashioned flowers whose perfumes were wafted through the widely-opened windows and also with nowadays beeswax and turpentine, found herself seated inside a cubicle that was to be “all her own.”
It was then that the shyness came back.
If only she’d had Jan’s frock to change, or Jack’s bootlace to unknot! Of course she knew that school was really going to be lovely—her first acquaintance with Sybil, and Gerry, Miss Drury, and, yes, even with the old house itself, had assured her of that; but if only there had been somebody there who needed her as they all had needed her at home!