Down on the floor they sat in a semicircle. They found this better for confidences than being scattered about the room on chairs.
“Well,” Adele began, “I was in Madame Deriby’s office and in answer to her question, I had just told her that I liked literature best of all, when there came a knock on the door and Miss Berry, the kindergarten teacher, came in and her eyes were red and swollen. She held an open letter. Madame Deriby stood up and put an arm about her. Miss Berry, you know, is hardly more than a girl herself. They had both forgotten about me, and I was wondering if I ought to leave the room when the teacher said that her little brother was ill, and cried for her day and night, and she did so want to go to him.
“‘Of course you must go!’ Madame Deriby said kindly. ‘Ask Marie to help you pack and I will have Patrick bring around the bus. You ought to be able to catch the afternoon train.’
“When Miss Berry was gone, Madame Deriby telephoned to the stables and then she sat down and looked thoughtful for a moment. At last, turning to me with a smile, she said, ‘Adele, I was just wishing that I knew some real nice older girl who would like to come to Linden Hall and help teach the very little ones in exchange for her tuition.’
“Girls, when I heard that I almost cried out in delight. However, I tried to hide my joy and I said as quietly as I could, ‘Madame Deriby, I know just such a girl and I am sure that you would like to have her.’ Then I told her all about our darling Trudie. Madame Deriby was ever so pleased and she told me to write and ask if Gertrude can come next Saturday, and since that will be day after to-morrow, I must pen the epistle at once,” she ended, springing up and skipping to her desk.
Then, when the letter had been mailed, the girls from Sunnyside waited in almost breathless eagerness to know whether or not their dear friend could join them at Linden Hall.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NEW TEACHER
Great was the excitement in Apple-Blossom Alley on Saturday morning. Adele was up before the rising bell and as soon as she was dressed, she tapped on each of the neighboring doors calling, “Wake up! Maybe Gertrude is coming to-day.”
“I am so glad that it is Saturday,” Betty Burd declared. “Perhaps Madame Deriby will allow us all to go to the station to meet Trudie, and won’t we hug her though?”
“But we are not sure that she is coming,” Bertha Angel said.