Three girl chums at Laurel Hall

by May Hollis Barton

Of course all this had happened years before the three chums were ready for school, but Laurel Hall remained substantially as it was when the sale took place.

One entered a great square hall from which a broad stairway ascended to a gallery above. Numerous rooms opened from this gallery and formed the dormitories of the students. There was a third floor, but only a few rooms were finished off here, and they were mostly occupied by servants. There was a great open attic also, and from this ran tiny fascinating stairways—scarcely more than ladders—ascending into turrets, and tower rooms from which one could gain a view of the countryside.

On the first floor were the classrooms, a large drawing, and a reception room, the dining hall already described and the rooms occupied by members of the faculty. The kitchen, presided over by a Negro cook named Nora, had been built on later and never seemed quite in keeping with the rest of the place. The girls liked it, however, as Nora often slipped them handfuls of fresh cookies out of the side door and never objected to making up picnic lunches whenever they were required. The kitchen was, the students thought, the pleasantest and most homelike place at Laurel Hall.

Now, for the members of the faculty.

Miss Travers, the teacher of mathematics, a slight energetic woman with an intellectual face, was well on in her fifties, yet carried with her a heart that was eternally young and in complete sympathy with the moods and caprices of her young charges.

The girls loved her, and, in lieu of mother just then, came to her with their troubles and problems, always sure of complete understanding and kindly guidance.

While the girls had a great affection for Miss Romaine, who was always pleasant and gracious and rigidly just, they could not approach her as they did Miss Travers, for she seemed to stand aloof from them surrounded by the wall of her reserve.

Then there was absent-minded Miss Ridley, the teacher of history. Except when teaching this subject dear to her heart, Miss Ridley seemed to dwell on a strange and infinitely remote planet all her own. She could never remember names, and the girls soon learned that a culprit coming unprepared to one of Miss Ridley's classes, could, by gazing always demurely at her desk, avoid detection.

For Miss Ridley when she asked a question would invariably point at any one who happened to be looking in her direction and snap out crisply, "You tell me!"

Those that did not look in Miss Ridley's direction were seldom called upon for recitation, since that lady was loath to admit that she could not remember names.