Now she found that, school having opened, the girls fell right back into their old associations. There were the usual groups, or cliques. She would have to earn her place in the school, just as though she did not know a soul.
Beatrice, or "Trix" Severn, was not one of those whom Agnes was anxious to be friendly with; and here Trix was in the very seat beside her, while Eva Larry and Myra Stetson were across the room!
The prospect looked cloudy to Agnes, and she began the first school session with less confidence than any of her sisters.
CHAPTER IX
POPOCATEPETL IN MISCHIEF
Miss Georgiana Shipman was a plump lady in a tight bodice—short, dark, with a frankly double chin and eyes that almost always smiled. She did not possess a single beautiful feature; yet that smile of hers—friendly, appreciative of one's failings as well as one's successes—that smile cloaked a multitude of short-comings.
One found one's self loving Miss Georgiana—if one was a girl—almost at once; and the boldest and most unruly boy dropped his head and was ashamed to make Miss Georgiana trouble.
Sometimes boys with a long record of misdeeds behind them in other grades—misdeeds that blackened the pages of other teachers' deportment books—somehow managed to reach the door of Miss Georgiana's room without being dismissed from the school by the principal. Once having entered the favored portal, their characters seemed to change magically.
Mr. Marks knew that if he could bring the most abandoned scapegrace along in his studies so that he could spend a year with Miss Georgiana Shipman, in nine cases out of ten these hard-to-manage boys would be saved to the school. Sometimes they graduated at the very top of their classes.