A little later Ella and her mother went up to the almost unfurnished rooms. Ella stood looking through the open door down the lonely corridor. There were no nice girls about; there was no canopy to the bed; there were no story-books; there was no one to talk to her. Everybody was grown up; there were no children. There were no city lights, and the twilight seemed to be shutting down faster than it ever did before.
“Oh, this doesn’t seem one bit, not one single bit, like a seminary,” Ella cried.
The mother gathered her into her lap, and there the little girl sobbed away her loneliness and disappointment, and forgot it all in sleep. But the mother sat beside the window, looking out into the darkness and the past; for it was here that she and the father had first met, in the old joyful student days; and now he was gone, and she had come back, alone, to teach students who were, as she had then been, at the happy beginnings.
When the morning came, things were better, Ella thought. The sun shone, and people began to gather. The first arrivals were teachers and boy and girl students. Then came students of earlier days, for the seminary had been closed for some years and was now to be reopened. There were people from the village and the neighboring country, and a little later, when the stage from the city drove up, there were a number of dignified middle-aged men with long beards. These men were to make speeches.
The mother was helping to welcome the guests, and Ella wandered around alone. Before long she met a boy a little smaller than herself. The two children looked at each other.
“What’s your name?” the boy asked.
“Ella. What’s yours?”
“John. My father’s the principal. What did you have Christmas?”
“I had a doll and a bedstead for her and a book of fairy stories,” the little girl replied. “What did you have?”
“I had a sled and a rubber ball and some red mittens.”