“Now whom have we here?” muttered Leila in Marjorie’s ear.
Marjorie could not reply. The girl had reached the steps and was now composedly mounting them. She paid no more attention to the group on the steps than if they had not been there. She made an authoritative motion to the taxicab driver to place her bag on the veranda floor beside the door. She found the bell and rang it, looking even more bored.
As the stranger’s fingers pressed the electric button Miss Remson stepped to her side. “I am Miss Remson, the manager of Wayland Hall. What can I do for you?” she asked courteously.
“Oh, are you Miss Remson?” She regarded the brisk, little woman with indolent blue-green eyes. Her sweet, indifferent drawl went perfectly with her unconcerned appearance. “I am Miss Monroe. You have my father’s correspondence. I am here a trifle earlier than he mentioned in his letter to you. That need not signify,” she added carelessly.
Careful not to intrude the Five Travelers had moved on down the steps and away from the Hall. Vera had parked the car farther down the drive.
“What a perfectly beautiful girl!” Marjorie softly exclaimed when they got out of earshot of the Hall.
A murmur of agreement answered her.
“I suppose she’s a would-be,” speculated Vera. “Still, she can’t be. Miss Remson said yesterday that she didn’t intend to take any would-be’s until the week before the entrance exams. Then, only those who had applied for board at Wayland Hall. She never takes stray would-be’s.”
“Whoever she may be, she comes from afar,” informed Leila shrewdly. “Her traveling bag is English, via Paris. She has the bored air of the English, but, set me down in the streets of Paris, and I’ll soon be at the shop which furnished her hat and coat. If it is not one in the Rue de la Pais called L’harmonie, then I am no witch woman. The latest color plates they sent me show a coat like that gray.”
“Perhaps she is a friend of Miss Remson’s,” was Kathie’s suggestion.