“Chetwynd is my name,” said Eileen; “but I hope you won’t call me it. I am sure we shall be friends, more particularly as we are to start our new life in the same hall. Oh, I shall have much to tell you by and by. Lettie, why is that frown between your brows?”
“I did not know that I was frowning,” answered Letitia, “I was only thinking of the ornamental part of life, and how I could carry it out most effectively.”
Letitia was dressed with special care, not unsuitably, for she had too good taste for that; but so daintily, so exquisitely, with such a careful eye to the smallest details that Marjorie and Eileen looked rough and gauche beside her. Their serge skirts had been made by a work-girl, as nothing would induce them to waste money on a dressmaker. The work-girl had been discovered by Eileen in Fox Buildings. She had a lame knee and a sick brother, and Eileen seized upon her at once as a
suitable person for the job, as she expressed it. Finally, she was given most of the girls’ outfits to undertake.
She worked neatly, but had not the slightest idea of fitting. With numberless blouses, however, and a couple of serge skirts, and sailor hats, though cheap, at least looking clean, the girls passed muster, and were totally indifferent to their own appearance.
“When once we have plunged into our new work we shall be as happy as the day is long,” said Eileen. “I wonder if Belle arrived yesterday or to-day?”
“I sincerely trust she won’t come till to-morrow,” said Letitia, with a shudder. “I do not know for what sin I am doomed to reside under the same roof with that terrible girl.”
“A terrible girl? Who can she be?” asked Leslie.
“You will know for yourself before you have been many days at St. Wode’s,” was Lettie’s enigmatical reply. “Oh, and here we are, turning in at the gates! My heart does go pit-a-pat.”
Leslie’s face also became suffused with pink as the cabman drew up at the large wooden gates, which were presently opened by a neatly dressed young woman who lived at the lodge just within.