"Why, the professor's niece is living with him now. He is not much used to having a woman in his sitting-room, I guess. She sits and sews with him in the evening while he reads or corrects our futile work," said Bobby, grinning.
"The other night Ellie Lingard--that's his niece--lost her scissors and she said they hunted all over the room for them. The next morning in one of the physics classes the professor opened his book, and there were the lost scissors, which he had tucked into it for a bookmark while he helped Ellie Lingard hunt for her lost property."
"Oh, oh!" laughed the twins.
"The worst of it was," continued Bobby, with an elfish grin, "Old Dimple grabbed them up and said right out loud: 'Oh, here they are, Ellie!' The boys just hooted, and poor Old Dimp was as mad as a hatter."
"The poor old man," said Dorothy commiseratingly.
It was a fact that, although Professor Dimp did not interfere in this play business, most of the other teachers desired to have their opinions considered. The girls would not have minded Mr. Sharp. Indeed, they courted his advice. But when Miss Grace Gee Carrington stood up to speak, some of them audibly groaned.
Miss Carrington was Mr. Sharp's assistant and almost in complete control of the girls of the school. At least, the girls came in contact with her much more than they did with Mr. Sharp himself.
She was a very stiff and precise woman, with an acrid temper and a sharp tongue. She had been teaching unruly girls for so many years that she was to a degree quite soured upon the world--especially that world of school which she had so much to do with.
Of late, however, Miss Carrington had become interested "quite in a human way," her girls said, in a person who had first appeared to the ken of the girls of Central High as a Gypsy girl. Margit Salgo's father, a Hungarian Gypsy musician, had married Miss Carrington's sister, much against the desire of Miss Grace Gee Carrington herself. When the orphaned Margit found her way to Centerport she made such an impression upon her aunt's heart that the latter finally took the girl into her own home and adopted her as "Margaret Carrington."
That, however, could not change Miss Carrington's nature. She was severe and (in the opinion of fly-away Bobby Hargrew) she was much inclined to interfere in the girls' affairs. On this occasion the girls were not disappointed when Miss Carrington "said her little say."