“That top-lofty Helen Rhinelander. She calls this the ‘dunce’s corner’ and that you wouldn’t have been any more conspicuous if Madame had stood you on a stool with a cap on your head. I don’t see what’s the matter with Helen. She’s hateful enough all the time but she’s never been quite so unpleasant as since you, came, yesterday. I—I wish she’d behave.”
“So do I. What’s more I’ll make her yet!”
“Why—Jessica! How can you?” asked the other girl, astonished, as a group of schoolmates drew near, anxious to know the “new-er” who had already so stirred the quiet depths of the school.
There was a flash of “Little Captain’s” blue eyes, as she answered:
“I don’t know just how yet but I will. I’ll make her so ashamed she’ll want to hide her head. Madame said she was a real gentlewoman, and if she is her hatefulness can’t be deep. I’ll conquer her by kindness, as my mother says is the best way with ugly folks. That’s the way she did a Chinese cook we had at Sobrante, and who was—horrible. But he got over it. Nobody could be nicer than Wun Lung is now.”
“Let’s go out into the garden. The ’mums are just beautiful now. Do you have chrysanthemums in California, Jessica?” asked another girl, slipping her arm about the stranger in such a friendly manner that Helen Rhinelander’s coldness was forgotten.
“Little Captain” had always won liking, wherever she was known, because of her keen interest in other people and her forgetfulness of self, nor did she fail now. One by one, her fellow students, even from the higher forms, gathered about the stranger, listening to her “Californian talk”—a subject which made her tongue run glibly; and so graphically did she describe life at Sobrante that she made these New Yorkers envious of its freedom and constant sunshine. But not a word did she speak of her prospective wealth; and, oddly enough, from this reticence the notion spread that she was in reality a poor girl.
“One of Madame’s charity pupils. The daughter of a former ‘Adelphian’ who can’t afford to pay for her. That’s why she’s dressed in such cheap stuff. Well, she’s nice. She’s real nice, even if she is the ‘stupidest girl in school,’ and I shall treat her just the same as if she were one of us,” said Rosalie Thorne, a sweet-faced senior who was Helen’s rival for “honors” and was greatly beloved of both teachers and mates. She was, also, a very conscientious person and, perceiving Helen’s attitude toward the “wild Westerner” set herself to use her own influence in an opposite direction.
Thus it happened that Jessica’s coming had divided the school into two factions; which promptly elected themselves to be “Pros” and “Cons,” and beginning with the toss of one haughty young head had grown like that veritable “bean-stalk” to which Miss Montaigne had smilingly referred.
But Jessica, the innocent cause of this disruption, took it lightly. Sufficient for her the fact that there were “Pros” enough to more than satisfy her longing for “girls,” and that these were almost as admiringly affectionate as even her “boys” at home. So, before many hours passed she was so happy that “she almost felt wicked,” remembering how desperately sad she had been at parting with her mother. She even questioned Madame Mearsom herself upon the subject: