Nevertheless, Percy shrunk very close to her aunt's side as they entered the house. School was out for the afternoon, and there was a great buzz of young voices. Percy could see through an open door into the library, where two or three young ladies had their heads together over a volume of prints, and another was reading by herself in a book which looked as if it had been a good deal used, but was not a school book, nor a history. Percy loved books dearly, and she had been kept on a pretty short allowance of them. She thought the young ladies looked pleasant and not at all stuck-up or supercilious, and she wondered whether either of them would turn out to be the room-mate she had so much dreaded.
"Percy has always been used to sleeping alone," remarked Miss Devine to Mrs. Richardson, the lady Principal. "I don't quite know how she will get on with a room-mate."
"I think we can manage that matter nicely," replied Mrs. Richardson, and then she looked into the library, and called:
"Blandina, my dear, will you come here?"
The young lady, who was reading, closed her book, and came forward neither shyly nor boldly, but with a modest and self-possessed air.
"This is Miss Blandina St. Clair," said Mrs. Richardson. "Blandina, the little room which opens out of yours is unoccupied, I believe?"
"Yes, ma'am," answered Miss St. Clair: "Henrietta Hardy had it; but she is not coming back."
"Then I think I shall ask you to take in this little girl—Miss Percy Denham. Suppose you carry her off, and show her the room and the house, while I talk with her aunt a while."
Percy looked rather miserable at being separated from her aunt; but she could not be ungracious when every one was so kind, and she rose to follow Miss St. Clair with more alacrity than her aunt expected.
"Percy is very bashful," Miss Devine remarked, when the girls had left the room; "but it is real shyness, and not affectation. She has never been to school, but has lived with her father and mother in a little world of her own, and she is as much afraid of children of her own age as if they were Indians."