“I don’t know why it’s so funny. I’m—”
“Fifteen. So you are. But bless me, child, the Leaguers will never accept you in a middy blouse and pigtails. What’s Isolde thinking of? And you look much too plump! Now—” But Sidney stalked haughtily past her tormenter into the hall.
Vick’s bantering, however, had stung her. The old clock on the stair landing chiming out the approaching hour of the League visitors warned Sidney that there was not time to change her middy with its faded collar; nor to wind the despised pigtails, around her head in the fashion Mrs. Milliken called “So beautifully quaint.” Anyway, if there were all the time in the world she would not do it. She’d begin right now being her own self and not something the League wanted her to be because she was a poet’s daughter! Isolde and Trude might yield weakly to their fate but she would be strong. Perhaps, some day, she would rescue them—even Vicky!
But as an unmistakable wave of chattering from without struck her ear her fine defiance deserted her. She ran to the door and peeped through one of the narrow windows that framed the door on either side.
At the gate stood Mrs. Milliken and a strange woman. Behind them, in twos, stretched a long queue of girls—girls of about her own age. They wore trim serge dresses with white collars, all alike. They carried notebooks in their hands. They leaned toward one another, whispering, giggling.
Sidney’s heart gave a tremendous bound. It was most certainly a boarding school! It was the nearest she had ever been to one! She forgot her middy and the hated pigtails, and the dread of the League. She threw open the door. Mrs. Milliken’s voice came to her: “He died on April tenth, Nineteen eighteen. He had just written that sonnet to the West Wind. You know it I am sure. He bought this house when he came to Middletown but he made it his as though he’d lived in it all his life—we have left it exactly as it was when he was with us—our committee——”
They came walking slowly toward the house, Mrs. Milliken and the strange woman with reverent mien, the wriggling queue still whispering and giggling.
CHAPTER III
POLA LIFTS A CURTAIN
“Where is Isolde?” Mrs. Milliken whispered between her “Note the gracious proportions of this hall” and “Joseph Romley would never allow himself to be crowded with possessions.”
“She’s—she’s—” Sidney had a sudden instinct to protect Isolde. “She has—a headache.”