Adele Doring at Boarding School

by Grace May North

“Come in,” she said kindly, feeling almost sure that she knew what the visitor had to say, nor was she wrong.

“Madame Deriby,” the girl began, “I wish to notify my father that I want to be removed from this school at once. In England I was never called upon to associate with any one in a class beneath me, and I certainly shall not begin doing so now. What would my friends at Barrington Manor think of me, if they knew that I was rooming with a girl named Matilda Jane Perkins, who wears a plaid shawl for a coat, a beaver cap for a hat, and thick woolly mittens instead of gloves. I had told you, Madame Deriby, that I did not care to make the acquaintance of any one here. My father pays my tuition, not to have me humiliated, but in order that I may continue my education while he is obliged to be in the States.”

The matron listened gravely to this indignant torrent of words and when the girl paused, she said not unkindly, “Be seated, Geraldine. I am sorry that you have been so distressed, and if there were a single unoccupied room in the school, I would gladly give it to you. It would be impossible for me to communicate with your father for the next two weeks, as he has informed me, and you, too, I believe, that he will be traveling on the desert and will not expect mail for a fortnight.”

Geraldine tossed her head. “Well, if I am obliged to stay in this school for that long, I at least will not sleep in the same room with a farmer’s daughter.”

There was a sad expression in Madame Deriby’s grey eyes. For a moment she was thoughtful and then she said: “There is a small room in the cupola which is unoccupied. I will have it prepared and you may sleep there to-night if you prefer.”

“I most certainly do prefer,” the girl replied as she rose and left the office.

An hour later, when she returned to her room, planning to pack her trunk preparatory to having it moved to the cupola, she found Matilda seated in an easy-chair on her own side of the sunny bay-window. She held a pad and pencil and was writing a letter to her far-away brothers. The prairie girl heard the door open and some one enter, but, acting upon the advice of her counselors, she did not glance up, but continued her writing as though she were alone. Geraldine deliberately turned her back toward her roommate. Matilda glanced at the flaxen head and there was a sad expression in her wonderful eyes.

“Poor girl!” she thought. “How much happier she would be if she could forget that she is a Barrington and realize that really we are all of us just folks.”

At that moment there came a rap on the door and Peggy Pierce called, “Starr, are you there? We want you to come to Apple-Blossom Alley.”

When Matilda was gone, Geraldine happened to glance at the writing-desk on the other side of the room. There she saw a small red book which was lying open as though it had recently been written in. The English girl would have scorned any one else who would have done a thing so dishonorable, but so great was her curiosity to know what this plebeian girl could have written in her diary that she deliberately locked the door and picking up the small book, she read: “March the 6th. Linden Hall is such a wonderful place and many of the girls have been so kind, especially Adele Doring and Gertrude Willis. My roommate, Geraldine Barrington, is the most beautiful girl in the school, or at least she would be if she had a pleasanter expression. She is very haughty and proud and the girls say that is probably because she is English, and yet my own dear mother was born in England and lived there until she was seventeen and she was very kind to every one; but perhaps Mother did not belong to the haughty class. I am certainly glad that she did not, for they are not very pleasant to live with.”