“Oh, I daresay you don’t believe us,” said Edith, who had correctly interpreted the glances, “but just you wait and see. All the new girls think the same, and I daresay that we should have, too, if we had come here from some other school; but, thank goodness, we didn’t. There aren’t any more schools like this, are there, Ruth?”
“Nary one; there’s only one, and we’ve got it,” cried the irrepressible Ruth, and two weeks later the girls found that, truly, no rules could be broken where none existed.
CHAPTER V
TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION
It could hardly be expected that, after her training of the past six and a half years, Toinette would at once respond to the wiser, more elevating influences now surrounding her. The old impulses would return, and a desire to conceal where no concealment was necessary often placed her in a false light. She distrusted those in authority simply because they were in authority, rather than that they ever made it apparent. It seemed to have become second nature with her, and bade fair to prove a work of almost infinite patience and love upon the part of the teachers to undo the mischief wrought in those miserable years.
But, after making a toy of the poor child for all that time, fickle fate seemed about to make amends, and, although it was yet to be proven, Toinette was now launched upon a sunny sea, and destined to sail into a happy harbor.
She was sitting in her room one beautiful afternoon about a week after her arrival at the school, and, unconsciously doing profitable examples in rhetoric by drawing nice contrasts between her present surroundings and her former ones. Presently a tap came upon her door, and she called: “Come in.”
In bounced Ruth, crying: “Come on down to the village with us, will you? Edith and Cicely are waiting at the gate.”