Chapter Seven.
A Day At School.
If Hester Thornton went to sleep that night under a sort of dreamy, hazy impression that school was a place without a great deal of order, with many kind and sympathising faces, and with some not so agreeable; if she went to sleep under the impression that she had dropped into a sort of medley, that she had found herself in a vast new world where certain personages exercised undoubtedly a strong moral influence, but where on the whole a number of other people did pretty much what they pleased—she awoke in the morning to find her preconceived ideas scattered to the four winds.
There was nothing of apparent liberty about the Lavender House arrangements in the early morning hours. In the first, place, it seemed quite the middle of the night when Hester was awakened by a loud gong, which clanged through the house and caused her to sit up in bed in a considerable state of fright and perplexity. A moment or two later a neatly-dressed maid-servant came into the room with a can of hot water; she lit a pair of candles on the mantelpiece, and, with the remark that the second gong would sound in half an hour, and that all the young ladies would be expected to assemble in the chapel at seven o’clock precisely, she left the room.
Hester pulled her pretty little gold watch from under her pillow, and saw with a sigh that it was now half-past six.
“What odious hours they keep in this horrid place!” she said to herself. “Well, well, I always did know that school would be unendurable.”
She waited for five minutes before she got up, and then she dressed herself languidly, and, if the truth must be told, in a very untidy fashion. She managed to be dressed by the time the second gong sounded, but she had only one moment to give to her private prayers. She reflected, however, that this did not greatly matter as she was going down to prayers immediately in the chapel.
The service in the chapel the night before had impressed her more deeply than she cared to own, and she followed her companions downstairs with a certain feeling of pleasure at the thought of again seeing Mr Everard and Mrs Willis. She wondered if they would take much notice of her this morning, and she thought it just possible that Mr Everard, who had looked at her so compassionately the night before, might be induced, for the sake of his old friendship with her mother, to take her home with him to spend the day. She thought she would rather like to spend a day with Mr Everard, and she fancied he was the sort of person who would influence her and help her to be good. Hester fancied that if some very interesting and quite out of the common person took her in hand, she might be formed into something extremely noble—noble enough even to forgive Annie Forest.