"Our first meal at Laurel Hall!" Sadie surreptitiously squeezed Jo's hand as they neared a large door through which floated appetizing odors. "Isn't it scrumptious?"
Jo only smiled in answer, for they had reached the dining hall.
"There's Miss Tully—the teacher in charge this week," Jessie said. "She will assign you your places at table."
The three Woodford girls regarded Miss Tully with interest, as being the first of the faculty, with the exception of Miss Romaine, whom they had yet seen.
Miss Tully was of medium height. She was very thin, almost, the new girls thought, the thinnest person they had ever seen. She wore her hair drawn severely back from a severe brow and her gray eyes, small and bright under level brows, carried out this general impression of severity.
All in all, from the moment of looking at Miss Tully the three chums found themselves in awe of her and avoided the glance of that hard gray eye with dexterity. Miss Tully, while being an excellent disciplinarian, was not popular with the girls of Laurel Hall nor with the rest of the faculty.
"Gracious, I hope they're not all like her!" whispered Nan Harrison irrepressibly, and was treated to a nudge by Jo.
"Keep still!" she whispered back. "Do you want her to put you in the dungeon?"
Miss Tully was indeed glancing in their direction with a contraction of her heavy brows that might have been disapproval. In this case it was merely mental concentration, but the girls could not have been expected to know that.
"Your names, young ladies?" asked the teacher, as Jessie drew her new friends forward.