Barbara took two quick steps forward, as the door closed behind her, and stood there waiting. She had acted this scene over and over again in her mind, and she had always made her entrance like this; after which a girl, whose face was plump and ordinary, and whose legs were of the right proportions, and whose hair was smooth and under proper control, had always come towards her with a welcoming smile and had led her up to the other girls, who all had welcoming smiles too. And everybody had listened to her while she talked about her home and her father and the boys; and nobody had laughed and nobody had teased, and nobody had told her to ‘shut up.’ It had been a very favourite scene in her dream of school, and she waited eagerly for the other actors in it to come forward and do their part. But no one moved.
The room in which she found herself was certainly not like the one she had imagined. It was long and low and prettily shaped, with two wide bow-windows thrown out on one side of it, and a great square fireplace taking up most of the wall that faced the doorway. Next to the fireplace was a curtained archway, which evidently formed the entrance into another room, judging by the buzz of laughter and conversation from beyond that the thick red curtain failed to stifle. The bookshelves on the two remaining walls were made of plain oak; so were the desks and chairs that stood neatly arranged round the room in rows. There were also plain oak benches in the warm chimney-corners, and plain oak window-seats in the bowed recesses, while the floor was made of the same wood and was left quite bare, except for a rug in front of the hearth. A pot or two of chrysanthemums, some blue china on the over-mantel, and one or two hammered metal lamps that hung from the beams in the ceiling, were the only ornaments in the room; and the whole effect was so simple and so clean that Barbara, fresh from the dingy old schoolroom in which she had passed her life until now, was obliged to forget everything else for the moment and just stare round her. Then her eyes rested again on the girls who were scattered in groups about the room, and the expectant look on her face became a little wistful.
There seemed to be thirty or forty of them all together; and from the noise on the other side of the curtain Babs concluded that there were as many, or more, in the room beyond. They all talked without ceasing,–all at once, it seemed to Barbara,–about their Christmas holidays and their Christmas presents, about the parties they had been to and the pantomimes they had seen, about the girls who were not back and the girls who were, about everything, in fact, except the child by the door, who had been waiting all her life for this moment. What did it matter to them that she should go through a few seconds of embarrassment? They had all been through the same, in their time; and it was not to be supposed that they should make things any easier for future generations of new girls. So they went on babbling about their own affairs, and Barbara went on expecting some one to come and put an end to her discomfort. But nobody came.
Slowly, she began to feel conscious, just as she had done when she first met Jill, that there was something odd about her appearance. In spite of the extra inch or two on the bottom hem of her frock, and the temporary smoothness that a vigorous application of a wet brush had produced on her hair, Babs saw with a kind of dismay that she was not made in the same pattern as the crowd of neatly dressed girls before her. None of them wore her hair loose and curly like her own, and none of them looked as though she did not know what to do with her hands. If only she could have held on to something, Barbara felt sure she would not have felt so shy or so helpless. There was a chair only two yards off; but something kept her standing where she was, and she did not even reach out her hand to it.
The girls continued their conversation, and forgot all about the new-comer that Miss Finlayson had brought in. Most of them stood facing the fire and had not even looked at her; and the others, who glanced now and then towards the door, only shrugged their shoulders and wondered why the stupid child did not sit down, instead of standing still in that purposeless manner. They did not mean to be unkind, but how were they to know that she was fighting through her first disillusionment?
All at once, a diversion was made by two children from the other room, who came tumbling through the curtain and nearly upset a tall fair girl who was the centre of the group round the fire.
‘Look where you are going, Angela Wilkins!’ said the fair girl, sternly. ‘What are you children doing in here, I should like to know?’
‘Please, Margaret, don’t be cross, and do let me explain,’ begged Angela Wilkins, suppressing an inclination to giggle, and pouring out her words hastily. ‘Jean has had millions of letters from Jill Urquhart, and she says––’
‘It wasn’t millions, Angela, it was only one,’ corrected her fellow-culprit from behind.
‘And what business has Jean Murray to hear from Jill Urquhart?’ demanded the fair girl.