Peggy Stewart at School

by Gabrielle E. Jackson

Both Lily Pearl and Helen were gotten up regardless. Each wore extravagant gowns, each had done up her hair and supplemented it by wonderful creations of false puffs. Each wore dangling ear-rings and the complexion of each girl had been "assisted."

Poor Mrs. Harold felt as though a couple of chorus girls had invaded her little sanctum, and Peggy and Polly were furious. But it was too late then to retreat and a few moments later the midshipmen began to pour into the sitting-room, the two who were to take Helen and Lily being men whom Mrs. Harold had always avoided, feeling that they were no companions for the frank, unaffected girls she loved so dearly. She resolved to keep her eye piped.

It was a merry afternoon. Rosalie scintillated, and her scintillation proved infectious for Jean Paul, upon whom she had made a deep impression at Thanksgiving; he instantly appropriated her, greatly to Mrs. Harold's amusement, for she was never too fully occupied to notice significant signs.

Quiet, dignified Bert Taylor had promptly taken bonny Natalie under his serene protection. And Juno! Well she was sorely divided between Doug's towering seventy-four inches and Gordon's sixty-nine, though she strove to conceal the exaltation which her uniformed gallants stirred in her soul by bringing to bear upon them all the superlative superiority which she had studied as the acme of success in the habitues of the Hotel Astor. With Douglas it worked to a charm. He rose to the corresponding rôle as a trout to a fly, but poor Gordon was only too thankful when the companionship and conversation became more general. The superior young lady from the metropolis was beyond his ken. Little Nelly Bolivar's sweetness and quaint humor filled his ideals to far greater satisfaction. He had met Nelly first at Severndale and several times since with Mrs. Harold, who had often invited her to spend the weekend at Wilmot, where she had looked to the young girl's welfare, knowing how much she must miss Peggy this winter.

Nelly was simply dressed in a gown which had once been Peggy's, for most of Peggy's garments went to Nelly, but were given so sweetly and with such evident love, that not even the most sensitive nature could have been wounded, and they were a real blessing to her. No one ever commented upon the fact and before going to Columbia Heights, Nelly had spent many a busy hour with Mrs. Harold remodeling and working like a little beaver under that good friend's guidance, for Nelly was a skilful little needlewoman. As a result, no girl in the school was more suitably gowned. The only girls who had eyed her critically were Lily Pearl, Helen and Juno. The first because she was too shallow to do aught but follow Helen's lead, and Juno from a naturally critical disposition. Juno meant to hold her favor somewhat in reserve. She intended first to see what Nelly's standing at Severndale proved. She might be Polly's and Peggy's friend—well and good—but who was she? Would she find a welcome among the Delacys, the Vanderstacks, the Dryers and heaven knows which-or-whats of New York's glitterers?

Juno was hardly in a position to gauge her standards by those who represented the big city's finest and best. She saw the patrons of the great hotels and moved among them, but of New York's sterling worth, she was as ignorant as a babe. Its superficial glamour and glitter, as well as its less desirable contingent, which she was not sufficiently experienced in the world's ways to fully understand, made the strongest appeal to her. Poor little Nelly Bolivar would have been a modest, sleek little Junco compared with the birds of paradise (?), cockatoos, and pheasants of Juno's world, but of all this Nelly was quite unaware and too happy in her present surroundings to care.

It was a merry afternoon for all, but a diversion was created by Polly, shortly before it ended.

She was at the tea-table pouring, and talking to Ralph like a phonograph, when Mrs. Harold became aware of a horrible odor, and cried:

"What under the sun smells so abominably? Why, Polly Howland, look at my perfectly good teakettle! It is red hot, and—horrors—there isn't one drop of water in it!"

True enough, absorbed in her conversation with Ralph, Polly had completely overlooked the trifling detail of keeping her kettle filled, though the alcohol lamp beneath it was doing its duty most lampfully.