“I’m a Junior,” said Priscilla, “and so are Dorothy and Imogene. Anne is a Senior like Mary. Vivian’s a Sophomore, and Lucile Du Bose, too, they say. As for Miss Van Rensaelar, no one knows. Maybe she’s a post-grad. She sounds very grand.”
That evening they finished unpacking, and by nine o’clock their room was quite settled. The Navajo rugs were on the floor—the envy of the house. The saddle-box they had covered, and with pillows it made quite a picturesque divan. Of course, the effect was lessened in the mind of any one who might attempt to sink down upon it, but it looked well, and there were chairs enough without it. Each cot was covered with afghan and pillows. Even the pictures were hung, and their few treasured books, of which Virginia discovered to her joy Priscilla was as fond as she, were placed in the little wall book-case from Virginia’s room at home. Altogether the big room had a cheery, homelike atmosphere, and they both felt very happy.
Before going to bed they visited their neighbors. Mary and Anne’s room they found not unlike their own, only there were even more books about, and an adorable tea-table with brass kettle and little alcohol lamp, for Seniors were allowed to serve tea on Saturday afternoons. Dorothy’s room was in a sad state of upheaval, the Navajo rug, carefully spread on the floor, being the only sign of an attempt at settlement. Dorothy herself was curled up on the couch, deep in a magazine. Her room-mate had not returned she said, so why arrange things? Their ideas might not harmonize.
The room opposite their own, occupied by Imogene and Vivian, was settled in a most unsettled manner. Virginia thought as she entered that never in her life had she seen so many things in one room. One entire wall was festooned with a dreaded fish-net, in which were caught literally hundreds of relatives, friends, and acquaintances; the other walls were covered with pennants. The couches were so piled with pillows that one could not find room to sit down; the dressers were loaded with costly silver toilet articles, and more friends in silver frames; even the curtains were heavy with souvenirs, which were pinned to them. There were no books, except a few school-books, tucked under the desk, and no pictures, save highly decorated posters, wedged among the pennants, where a few inches of bare space had not been allowed to remain uncovered. It all gave Virginia a kind of stifled sensation, and she was glad to return to their own room when the nine-thirty bell had rung.
It was strange to crawl into her cot-bed opposite Priscilla; strange to talk in whispers for a few moments, and then to say “Good-night.” For a few more moments she wondered with a wave of homesickness, more for her father than for herself, what they were all doing at home. Were they sleeping while the mountains kept their silent night watch? No, that could not be, for the time was different. Colonel Standish had explained that to her on the journey East. Dear Colonel Standish! What was that difference? Was it two hours earlier at Hillcrest? Then it would be only eight o’clock at home. Or was it—? But her tired head, so weary from the day’s excitement, refused to reckon differences in time, and Virginia fell asleep.
CHAPTER VII—“PERTAINING ESPECIALLY TO DECORUM”
The first two weeks of Virginia’s life at St. Helen’s passed without a cloud. The hours were as golden as the October days themselves. She and Priscilla liked each other better every day. She had already become acquainted with many of the girls at the other cottages, and she found them as jolly and merry as those at The Hermitage. She liked them—almost every one—and although at first her frank way of speaking, and the strangeness of her accent had puzzled and surprised them, they liked Virginia. Of course, all things accepted, they might have preferred being born in Massachusetts to Wyoming, for to many of them, as to Grandmother Webster, Wyoming seemed more or less of a wilderness, and a ranch rather a queer kind of home, but they had the good sense, and better manners, not to announce their preferences to Virginia; and as the days went by they liked her more and more. Wyoming might be a wilderness, they said to themselves; but this ranch-bred girl certainly was as cultured as any girl at St. Helen’s. So the letters which Virginia wrote almost daily to her father were very happy ones, and she almost began to doubt the possibility of being homesick in this beautiful place. Still, there were many weeks yet to come!
Her studies, with Miss King’s help, had been pleasantly arranged; and, thanks to her book of compositions she had brought, her wide reading, and her year of Algebra in the country school, she found herself, to her great joy, ranked as a Sophomore, and in classes with Lucile and Vivian. She liked Vivian very much, and tried hard to like Imogene for Vivian’s sake. As for Lucile, she found her interesting in a queer foreign kind of way, for Lucile’s French father, and her years in Paris and Lausanne, had given her ways hardly American. Besides, Virginia agreed with Dorothy, she would like Lucile for Miss Wallace’s sake alone; for Virginia, as the prophets had foretold, already loved Miss Wallace with unswerving loyalty.
Two more different persons than Miss Margaret Wallace and Miss Harriet Green would have been hard to find, especially housed beneath one roof, and presumably dedicated to the same ideals. Miss Wallace was young, enthusiastic, and attractive in appearance and personality; Miss Green was middle-aged, languid, and unattractive, certainly in appearance, and, as far as one could judge, in personality. Both were scrupulously conscientious, but Miss Wallace enforced the rules because she loved the girls, and Miss Green because it was her duty. Moreover, Margaret Wallace, remembering her own recent college days, trusted the girls before she suspected them; whereas Miss Green reversed the proceedings, and watched them closely before she decided to trust. The result of these different methods may be imagined. The girls obeyed Miss Wallace, because she never expected them to do otherwise. If they obeyed Miss Green, it was done unwillingly to save trouble.
Be it said to Miss Green’s credit that she was an excellent teacher. The colleges which the St. Helen’s girls entered, expected and received girls whose training in Latin and Greek was unexcelled. She had been ten years at St. Helen’s. Perhaps her superior teaching and her unshaken faithfulness to duty, more than offset her failure, which she herself did not perceive, as a disciplinarian. However that might be, the girls at St. Helen’s did not love Miss Green.