CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE NEW PUPIL
The Sunny Seven met under the elm tree in the school-yard the following Monday, when a strange girl appeared with her books under her arm. She was elaborately dressed, and each black curl hung in its prim and proper place.
“That new girl knows that we’re watching her,” Betty Burd exclaimed, “and she’s trying to put on airs. Who is she, anyway?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, and I don’t want to,” Rosamond Wright declared.
“I know who she is,” Doris Drexel said. “Her father was an inn-keeper out west until a few months ago. He owned a mine that never had amounted to much, so he told dad. Then one morning he woke up and found himself rich. After that his wife wanted to come east and live like folks, so they came. They have mints of money, dad says, and they have bought that beautiful Restwell estate out on the Lake Road. Father was asked there to dinner last night. Mother was, also, of course, but she declined, but dad is their banker and so he had to go. He said that the house is luxuriously furnished, but in very poor taste. Dad likes Mr. Green, but the wife boasts all the time of their great wealth, and tells what everything cost.”
“What is the girl’s name?” Adele asked.
Doris smiled. “Her name used to be plain Susie Green, but since they became rich, the mother thought Susie too common, and so they call her Susetta.”
“How ridiculous!” Bertha exclaimed. “I suppose if my father gets rich, I will have to be called Berthetta.”
“Well, then, let us hope that he never will,” Doris replied. “Dad said that poor Mr. Green acted like a fish out of water all the time. He hardly ate a mouthful at dinner, and afterward, when the two men were alone, Mr. Green said that he did wish they were out west again, where he could breathe. He said he felt smothered, with so much velvet around. Father was real sorry for him.”
“Poor little Susie!” Adele said, as the last school-bell began to ring. “So much money will probably spoil her, but we must be kind to her and make her feel that she is welcome to our school.”