“Stop that sort of talk and see how your dead boy stares at you! Look well, Robin, you see a real live Yankee girl!”
CHAPTER II
UNFORTUNATE BEGINNINGS
Even the most cultured Lady Principals do not enjoy being roused from their slumbers, an hour after midnight, by the tooting of a motor car beneath their bedroom windows. It was annoying to have to dress again and descend to a dimly-lighted reception room to receive a new pupil who had missed a train, on the route, and misdirected her telegram. Nor was there anything prepossessing about this especial girl, whose clothes steamed with moisture and whose travel-soiled cheeks were streaked by raindrops and tears. So it was small wonder that Dorothy’s reception by Miss Muriel Tross-Kingdon was decidedly cool and crisp.
“This is really unprecedented, Miss Calvert. I cannot understand how any young lady, whose friends consider her intelligent enough to travel alone, could have made such stupid blunders, as you have. At the point where you knew you were to change trains, why did you not keep watch and inquire for direction?”
“Well, you see there was a military parade and the soldiers looked so queer in their red uniforms and their funny little caps on the sides of their heads that—that—that I forgot. I mean the timetable told the right hour, course, but the first train was behind and so—and so—”
It was a very lame excuse and Dolly knew it. But it was the truth and as such she gave it.
Miss Tross-Kingdon made no reply. Inwardly she was commenting upon Dorothy’s pronunciation of certain words, which was wholly at fault according to English custom, and realizing that here was the first fault to be corrected in her new pupil.