“Eleanor,” Virginia said, “I’m just looking forward to our free evenings. We both like the same things and that, I am sure, is the secret of true comradeship.”
That afternoon the new teacher of the primary pupils began her duties, and she reported, when she returned to Apple Blossom lane, that she just adored the babies (there were five of them, and the oldest was seven, while the youngest was but four and a half), and if only she could have a letter from her mother every other day, at least, she was sure that she would be the happiest girl in all the school.
At the afternoon free period Virginia threw Winona’s warm-colored blanket over her head, for it had been a parting gift from the Indian maid to her schoolmate of many years, and, with a bundle of papers under her arm, she followed the path that was shoveled deep between snow banks, until it reached the shelter of the grove, and there, in many places, were pine needles on the ground that was but slightly covered with snow.
Miss Torrence was eagerly awaiting the editress of The Manuscript Magazine. “Herein lies our only hope,” Virginia said when her English teacher had led her in to the sunny little den where she spent many hours planning lessons for the girls, reading or writing. Now and then a poem by Miss Torrence appeared in a current magazine, to the delight of her girls.
The teacher smiled as she took the bundle of papers.
“Three stories and two poems, you say; and from them we may choose material for our first Manuscript Magazine? Thank you for bringing them. I will let you know tomorrow, Virginia, what I think of them.”
The girl, as was her wont, stopped a moment in the sunny living room to chat with the dear little old lady who liked nothing better than to have one of the pupils from the seminary tell her of their merry or busy life. “It gives me something pleasant to think over for quite a time,” she often said. But best of all, she liked to have Virginia visit with her, and then their talk was not of the school, but of the desert, and the little old lady’s eyes would glow as she would retell, time and again, the story of her journey across the plains with her father and mother in a prairie schooner. And Virginia would listen, at each telling, as though it were the first time she had heard it.
“She is such a nice girl,” the old lady would invariably tell her daughter, when Virg was gone. “I like the others, but some way I like her best.”
“Virginia is unselfish. She is sincerely interested in whatever interests others, and few girls are that,” Miss Torrence would reply.
At that same time Kathryn Von Wellering had called a meeting of her “Exclusive Three.”