Joan shook back her light fluffy hair, looking rather taken aback for an instant, as Marcia emerged from the closet, where she had been invisible, arranging a rack of shoes. "How do you do?" Marcia said briefly. "I didn't know I was taking your room. Miss Harland put me in here. She said there wasn't any other room, or I'd go somewhere else. I'm sorry."
"Oh, it's all right," Joan answered, recovering her equanimity quickly. "I'll go and see if Kathy can take me in, for the night, anyway. She's just across the hall, and she's by herself. I'll look her up."
She was gone, leaving Alison and Marcia to shake down together as best they could. Conversation languished. Alison tried to talk about her school work. It developed that they would be in the same classes; but Marcia seemed to have no enthusiasms. She had come to school because she was made to, and she looked forward to nothing but getting through.
Finally she said she was tired and lay down on her bed; and seeing presently that she had fallen asleep, Alison slipped out of the room across the hall to the room opposite, which was Katherine Bertram's. Katherine was better off financially than most of the girls. Her mother was dead and she had traveled and lived in hotel rooms for several years previously, and so her room at school was more like a home than anything she had known since her mother's death. It was prettily furnished, and her pictures and rugs were better and more luxurious than most schoolgirls' rooms could boast. Nevertheless, she was known as "a good fellow," and was popular with the girls.
Alison's tap at the door was answered by a cordial "Come in," and she entered, to find Katherine and Joan curled up on the bed, talking vigorously, but both sprang up to greet her joyously. She found a seat on a velvet-covered stool beside the couch, and Joan resumed her interrupted grumble.
"I'm just too disappointed and cross for anything," she lamented. "Here I came flying back to our old quarters like—like a homing pigeon, only to find my place taken by that cross-looking thing. I don't believe you are going to like her a bit, Alison. She doesn't look as if she would fit in."
"It is too bad; but then it gives me Joan for a roommate, which is a silver lining," said Katherine equably. "I didn't know there was a chance of your losing your place, or I would have spoken to Miss Harland and tried to get one of the old girls to change with her."
"Oh, well, it's only the first day; maybe something will happen; or we may like her better when we know her," said Alison hopefully.
"And in the mean time, Joan is welcome with me as long as she likes. I'll ask for a cot for her. There's plenty of room," said Katherine hospitably. "We shall be close by and can get together whenever we like. So cheer up, Jo, it won't be so bad."
They fell into an animated discussion of school matters, which was presently interrupted by a tumultuous rush outside, the door was opened without ceremony, and in flocked the rest of the "Kindred Spirit,"—Evelyn and Polly, boon companions, unlike as they were; studious Rachel; Rosalind, the school beauty, whose golden head and apple-blossom face scarcely suggested books or scholarship. These with Alison, Katherine and Joan, made up the seven "Kindred Spirits," an informal little club of loyal friends. Their favorite gathering place last year had been the room occupied by Alison and Joan, and consternation reigned when the news spread that the newcomer had usurped Joan's place.