“Fine feathers” may not make “fine birds”; it is generally conceded that true fineness lies somewhat deeper than the plumage, but fine feathers have a marked effect on the minds of ordinary little birds regarding the wearer of them; they have to be birds of considerable experience or native refinement not to judge their fellow bipeds by their plumage.
When the results of Nurse Hummel’s many shopping expeditions with Janet came home, and “Miss Lochinvar” appeared in the tasteful and well-made apparel they had chosen, Gladys treated her cousin with new, if not lasting, respect, and even Sydney showed by several surreptitious glances at her, which keen-eyed Gwen intercepted, that he was realizing for the first time that his quiet Western cousin was worth looking at.
Gwen felt something of the pride of an architect in the building he has created as she wheeled Jan around to view her from every point, and as she saw that the others were newly inclined to admire the girl of whom she was beginning to grow fond, and whom she would have loved dearly if she had not been too self-centered just then to give any one very much affection.
Janet was ashamed to discover that she shrank with no little terror from the ordeal of her first day at school. She felt quite sure that the accomplished young ladies, of whom she had seen examples and who were to be substituted for the girlish girls who had been her classmates in Crescendo, would know so much more than she that they would shame her in learning, as they outstripped her in worldly knowledge. She saw from the first instant that she entered the door that this school was to differ from her previous experiences in more than its pupils.
The Misses Larned, who were its principals—Gwen said that this did not necessarily make them the girls’ princibles—did not teach; they were at the head of the school by virtue of proprietorship, and they were the final, awful tribunal before which transgressors were haled, though, it must be confessed, without any more awful consequences, usually, than a severe lecture. But the girls said “they would rather die” than go up before the dignified sisters, “who were so solemn they took the starch out of a body before they opened their lips.” The same irreverent pupils called the school “the Hydra,” because it had two of that monster’s many heads. No one would ever know—none but the boldest dared speculate—what was the extent of the Misses Larned’s own learning. They walked into the class-rooms at intervals, and inquired of the presiding teachers as to the progress of the day’s work with such Minerva-like air that one felt convinced that the wisdom of the ancients and moderns sat enthroned behind their sapient eyeglasses.
They were wise in the selection of their teachers. “The Hydra” was really a very good school in that respect, and the girl who desired knowledge could obtain it there, and an excellent preparation for college beyond. But she who had not this desire could slip through with marvelously little instruction sticking to her brain, for it was a school frequented chiefly by the children of wealthy and fashionable people, and vigorous discipline would have been resented by the majority of the parents.
The school occupied an entire house on a cross-street, near the Park, and Janet passed under its portals with trepidation on her first morning. Gwen sustained her; Gladys had preceded them, and bore herself with a little air of aloofness, in spite of Jan’s better appearance, as if to provide herself against deeper disgrace than was absolutely necessary, in case “Miss Lochinvar” fulfilled her apprehensions.
It was not an easy matter to grade the new pupil. In arithmetic, history, geography, spelling, and in general information her teachers soon discovered that she far surpassed their old pupils, but she was guiltless of French, though, on the other hand, she could speak German—a point no girl in school ever aspired to reach. The extent of the universal ambition in regard to that tongue was to avoid so many mistakes in the gender and cases of nouns as should lead to a serious lowering of averages in marking percentage at the end of the year. On the whole, Janet passed her entrance examination with honor, and was placed in the class with Gwen for everything but French, which she “had to begin with the babies,” as Gladys disdainfully remarked. She was uncertain whether to be relieved or annoyed that “Miss Lochinvar” had been ranked with the best scholars, though Gladys’s ambition did not lead studyward.
A sudden rain prevented the customary brief walk in the Park at recess, and the girls gathered in the large room on the upper floor, formed by joining two rooms together, which was their refuge under such circumstances.
Gwen honestly meant to do her duty by Jan during this first recess, when she was to meet her future mates, but she began to talk to Azucena North, and quite forgot her cousin. Cena North was the daughter of a lady who had been steeped in admiration for Verdi and Trovatore when Cena was born; consequently she had named her baby after the gipsy in that opera, and Cena pathetically said that “if she must be named out of Trovatore she didn’t see why she couldn’t have been called Leonora.” Gwen didn’t see either; she privately pitied her friend deeply for being burdened with such a name as Azucena. But there were compensations, as there are in most misfortunes. Cena was one of the best scholars at the Misses Larned’s, and her father was Mr. North, the head of the great publishing house of North & Co., which Gwen felt accounted for Cena’s thoroughness, as well as partly made up for her name. Cena and Gwen were deep in a plan to lay before Mr. North Gwen’s novel—when it should be finished, of course—without telling him that it was the work of Cena’s classmate, a girl of fifteen. After he had accepted it, and he and his house had exhausted themselves in praise of its many brilliant qualities, Cena was to say demurely that she knew the author, and would bring her to her father’s office. And Gwen was to go with her—wearing her most simple and girlish gown, to increase the dramatic effect—down to the great establishment of North & Co., and Cena was to say, “Behold the new Charlotte Brontë!” or something to that effect. It is no wonder with such a project in hand that Jan slipped from Gwen’s mind when she and Cena collided in the “campus,” as they classically called the playroom. They straightway became oblivious to all but the discussion of ways and means for fulfilling the great plan, which really lacked but the novel to be successful.