“Now, my dears, you must make yourselves quite at home. You must not be shy, or lonely, or unhappy. You must enter—which I hope you will do very quick—into the life of this most delightful house. We are all willing and anxious to make you happy. As to your trunks, they will be unpacked and put away in one of the attics.”
“I wish we could sleep in an attic,” said Betty then in a fierce voice. “I hate company-rooms.”
“There is no attic available, my dear; and this, you must admit, is a nice room.”
“I admit nothing,” said Betty.
“I think it’s a nice room,” said Hester; “only, of course, we are not accustomed to it, and that great fire is so chokingly hot. May we open all the windows?”
“Certainly, dears, provided you don’t catch cold.”
“Catch cold!” said Sylvia in a voice of scorn. “If you had ever lived on a Scotch moor you wouldn’t talk of catching cold in a stuffy little hole of a place like this.”
Miss Symes had an excellent temper, but she found it a trifle difficult to keep it under control at that moment. “I must ask you for the keys of your trunks,” she said; “for while we are at dinner, which will be in about an hour’s time, Anderson will unpack them.”
“Thanks,” said Betty, “but we’d much rather unpack our own trunks.”
Miss Symes was silent for a minute. “In this house, dear, it is not the custom,” she said then. She spoke very gently. She was puzzled at the general appearance, speech, and get-up of the new girls.