“It was good of you not to waken me,” Shirley’s musical voice continued, “but I really am not anybody by the name of Sidney. I do suppose that of all things I had to strike the same school as my ‘double!’” Shirley looked rather disgusted.
“If you are not Sidney Thorne, then you certainly have a double. Why, it is the strangest thing! Please excuse me for having stared so. I am so surprised!”
“I do not blame you. There must be a strong resemblance, for I remember in Chicago several people took me for some one, I did not know who. It is rather enlightening, as my dad says, to know who she is,—unless I have two doubles! Wouldn’t that be terrible! I didn’t know that my ‘style of beauty’ was so common.”
“It isn’t. Sidney lives in Chicago all right, and is very well known there, or her father and mother are, which is the same thing. So you found out that you had a ‘double’ when you came to Chicago?”
“The first time. I stayed there a little while with my cousins. Then we went on with our big western trip that has made me late coming back to school. We got delayed toward the last. But we ought to get up, I suppose.”
“I should think we should!” cried Madge, looking at her watch, and hopping out of bed. “There will be some sensation this morning at breakfast! Shirley, Shirley, Shirley Harcourt,” Madge repeated reflectively. “Let me get used to it. I hope that you will not mind if I should call you Sidney by mistake. I do see something different about you, Shirley, but I can’t tell what it is for the life of me.”
“Thank fortune for that!” laughed Shirley, busy pulling on her shoes and stockings. “I’m afraid that it is going to be embarrassing all around.”
Madge said nothing in reply to that, for she was wondering what Sidney would think of it. That she would not like it at all was a foregone conclusion. How queer it was; but Madge had heard of such things.
Hurriedly the girls dressed. Shirley was quite glad that they wore a uniform at the school, though it occurred to her, as she slipped the one piece blue dress over her head, that the uniform would complicate the matter of identity. She had never thought of this possibility. There were too many wonderful things taking her attention every day, too many adventures planned in advance for much reflection. Letters to Europe and to Aunt Anne had taken her spare time. That she should meet her double at school!
Madge slipped a friendly hand in Shirley’s arm as they went downstairs and through confusing corridors to the big dining room. It was not as much of an ordeal to Shirley as it might have been to some girls, for she was accustomed to be invited with her parents to dinner at the dormitory where the co-eds at home held forth. This was very similar, Shirley thought. But she had determined not to say one word about her family or the professor of whom she was so proud. This year should be unique,—and, indeed, its opening adventures promised that it would be.