“Well, if she snubs any one of us, she may snub us all,” Doris Drexel declared, and then they talked of other things.
That very evening the cattle king’s daughter held a secret meeting of her clique to decide the fate of the newcomers. Strangely, however, the result of that meeting turned out disastrously for the one who least expected it, and that one was Gladys Merle Jones.
CHAPTER NINE
GLADYS MERLE’S CLIQUE
That night Madame Deriby permitted the newcomers to retire to their rooms directly after supper. At that hour it was the custom of the pupils to gather in the big recreation hall, either to play games or to converse in groups of three or more. They were not permitted to remain in groups of two at Linden Hall.
As soon as Evelyn and the other girls from Sunnyside had gone, Gladys Merle called a meeting of her particular clique in a palm-sheltered corner.
“Well, what do you make of these new girls?” Anita Ryan asked. Anita never ventured an opinion of her own, being always content, it would seem, to echo Gladys Merle.
“I presume that some of them come from well-to-do families,” this young lady condescended to say, “but I am not so sure of all of them, and there is one among them whom I think we should especially ignore until we find out something definite about her social standing.”
“Which one is that?” Anita inquired.
“It’s the one who came first,” was the answer. “That Carol Lorens! Now, is there any way for us to find out how much money her father has?”
“I overheard Madame Deriby saying that the Lorens family were old friends of the Dartmoors and that surely ought to be enough for us,” little Janet Nagel declared.