“Oh, how selfish I was to leave those dear brothers of mine with no one to get supper for them when they come home so tired at night.”
The girl in the other bed had awakened and she heard a half-stifled sob from Matilda’s corner. She curled her lips contemptuously. “Silly, sniffly thing,” she said to herself. Then a bell rang, and they both arose and dressed behind their sheltering screens. Geraldine Barrington finished her toilet hastily and without one glance at the new pupil she swept out of the room.
Matilda smiled to herself. This girl had not the power to hurt her. Instead she thought happily of the kind friends whom she had met the day before, and when she went out into the corridor, one of these hurried forward to meet her. “Good-morning, Starr,” Gertrude called. “I hope that you slept well.”
“I did indeed, thank you,” Matilda said brightly. “Gertrude, you know the old saying, ‘The dream you dream in a strange bed will come to pass some day.’”
“What was it?” Rosamond Wright asked as they joined the others at the entrance to Apple-Blossom Alley.
“It would be utterly impossible to have this dream come true,” Starr replied merrily, “for I dreamed that Geraldine Barrington begged me to be her friend and roommate, while the truth of the matter is, she has not even given me a kindly glance, so you see dreams go by contraries.”
While they were talking, the girls trooped down the broad front stairs. The matron in the lower hall smiled a greeting to them. The girls curtsied and chorused, “Good-morning, Madame Deriby.”
That good woman was pleased to see the Bishop’s protégée so differently clad. She felt sure that one of the Sunnyside girls had loaned her a uniform.
“I am glad that they are kind to poor Matilda,” she thought as she turned into her office, “for I am almost certain that her unfortunate roommate will not be.”
As soon as the door was closed, there came a rap upon it and when Madame Deriby reopened it, she found an angry and indignant Geraldine Barrington standing outside.