However, she had been glad to tell him that Muriel Storm was attending the High Cliff Seminary. This did not really surprise him, for often he had heard Doctor Winslow say that, as soon as he could convert the old sea captain to his point of view, he, at his own expense, intended sending the girl, of whom he was fond, to some good boarding school.
Little did Muriel dream that Gene’s proud mother had sent for him that she might get him away from the degrading influence of the fisherfolk with whom he had been staying and about whom she had heard from Marianne’s father, who was a business friend of Mr. Beavers.
Then for months she positively forbade the boy to write to the “island girl,” but at length, when his illness lasted so long, the mother consented to permit Gene to write if he would promise to remain in England until he was twenty-one. By that time he would have forgotten that daughter of the common people, for she, of course, would be unable to travel, and so they would not meet.
For a long time after the reading of the epistle Muriel sat with the letter lying in her lap as she gazed with unseeing eyes at the busy Hudson. If only she knew how to write! As yet she had never answered one of Gene’s letters, nor had he expected a reply. Of course, Faith, Gladys or Catherine Lambert, all dear friends, would gladly pen a letter at her dictation, but that would not be quite the same. She wanted to write the very first letter all by herself.
She wondered how long it would be before she could learn.
It was nearing five o’clock when there came a rap-i-tap upon her door, a signal meaning that Faith awaited without.
In reply to Rilla’s “Come in!” the door opened.
“Muriel Storm, I do believe that you have been day-dreaming again! Why haven’t you removed your hiking togs? I came up to tell you that Miss Widdemere wishes us to gather in the study hall at five-fifteen for the first class of the year in politeness.”
The island girl sprang up and hastily began to change her costume. “A class in politeness, is it?” she repeated, in a puzzled tone of voice. “What does one have to be learnin’ in that kind of a class?”
Faith sat on the window seat to wait until her friend was ready to accompany her. “Oh, it’s a sort of society stunt, so to speak,” she explained. “We practice curtsies for grace, make seven different varieties of calls, more or less, are taught what to do with our hands and feet, how to be a hostess and how to be a guest. Oh, yes, and what to do and what not to do if we’re ever presented to a queen.” Faith was purposely exaggerating. She really believed the class in politeness rather unnecessary, since the young ladies came from homes where they learned from babyhood all that they would need to know.