“Better believe I am,” was the feeling reply. “I get skittish even in this blessed place sometimes, but if I had been sent there I’d have been just like one of those little red imps that Miss Preston has standing on her writing table.”
“Yes, you’d have felt all rubbed the wrong way, just as Cicely and I feel, and just hate the sight of a teacher, and want to do everything you could to plague them,” said Toinette, petulantly.
“Well, you won’t want to do that here” answered Edith, emphatically. “If you cut any such capers in this school, it won’t be the teachers who will go for you, but the girls,” with a significant wag of her head.
“The girls?” asked Cicely, with a puzzled expression.
“Certain. We think our school about the best going, and we aren’t going to let anyone else think differently, if we can help it; are we, Ruth? So, if a girl takes it into her head to be rude and cranky to the teachers, or other girls, she finds herself in a corner pretty quick, I can tell you.”
“Suppose you break the rules?” asked Toinette.
“Aren’t any to break,” answered happy-go-lucky Ruth, as she pranced down the big room after the ball, which had gone bouncing off.
“No rules!” incredulously.
“Not a single one. All you’ve got to do is to be nice to everybody, remember you’re a gentlewoman (or you wouldn’t be here, let me tell you), and do your jolly best to pass your examinations. If you don’t it is your own fault, and you have to suffer for it; no one else, that’s sure; for you can have all the help you ask for.”
Toinette and Cicely exchanged glances.