“Is my gal anywhere handy? I dropped in to surprise her sort of, though her ma did write that I’d be hikin’ around this way.”
Miss Merritt stepped up to the stranger and said kindly, “If you will tell me the name of your daughter, I will have her called.”
“My gal is Gladys Jones,” the father said proudly. He did not notice the murmur of amazement, nor would he have understood it, but in that moment Gladys Merle lost her following.
A maid was sent to call the girl, but she pleaded illness, and asked that her father be permitted to come to her. What happened, even the girls in her own clique never knew, but for hours after Mr. Jones had left, a puzzled and saddened man, Gladys Merle refused to leave her room. She was sure that all the pupils would be laughing at her and she determined that she would not remain in that school another day. She would pack her trunk and leave the very next morning for her home. She had told an untruth. She had said that her father was stately and handsome, when all the time she knew, only too well, that he was merely an uneducated ranchman. True, he had great wealth, but Gladys Merle had been learning in the last few days that the girls of Linden Hall did not have the respect for riches that she had supposed they would have. She was still feeling humiliated from the cool manner in which Adele Doring had treated her.
“I’ll pack my trunk this very minute and I’ll leave this school without facing a one of those horrid girls,” she thought, and springing up she pulled open her bureau drawers and was just about to take out an armful of clothing when there came a light rap on her door. Gladys Merle tossed her head. “I just won’t see anybody,” she thought. “I suppose it’s Janet Nagel come to taunt me, but she won’t get the chance, so she might as well go away.”
However, the rapping continued, and a sweet voice, which certainly was not Janet’s, was calling, “Gladys Merle, may I come in a moment, please?”
Out of curiosity Gladys opened the door a crack. Then she stepped back in surprise, and her face flushed a deep crimson, for the girl standing without was no other than Carol Lorens.
Only a few moments before Janet Nagel had told Carol the whole story and that kind girl felt sorry indeed for Gladys and decided to call on her and see if she could not help her in some way. “May I come in?” Carol repeated pleasantly.
Gladys Merle’s first impulse was to slam the door but instead, she heard herself saying, “Oh, come in if you want to. I’ve been so humiliated I don’t care about anything.”
Then, flinging herself on the bed, she sobbed and sobbed. Carol closed the door and went to the bedside as she said kindly, “I know that I am a stranger to you, Gladys, but my mother has so often told me how to find the silver lining of each trouble that comes, I thought perhaps I might help you.”