[Illustration: RUBY MEETING MAUDE AT THE STATION
(missing from book)]
"Oh, I so wonder if she is going to boarding-school too," thought Ruby. "I never, never spected to see that girl again, but I don't know but what I am maybe a very little glad to see her, for I don't know one single other of the girls here, and it would be so lonesome for a while. She sha'n't make me do bad things now anyhow, for I am ever so much older than I was when she got me into so many troubles that summer."
Ruby had been told not to go away from the place where Aunt Emma had left her, so even to speak to Maude she would not leave it; but she did not need to, for in a few minutes Mrs. Birkenbaum went to the baggage-room, and Maude walked about looking around her.
In a little while her eyes fell upon Ruby, and she rushed forward with an exclamation of pleasure.
"Why, Ruby Harper!" she exclaimed, quite as much surprised at seeing Ruby as Ruby had been to see her. "I never thought of your being here. What are you doing here anyway?"
"I am going to boarding-school," answered Ruby, "and that is my trunk;" and she pointed to her pretty little black trunk, which the expressman was putting upon the wagon, that was getting quite a load of baggage by this time.
"I wonder if you are going to the same school that I am," said Maude. "I do hope you are, for then we can have such good times together. I am going to Miss Chalmer's Home Boarding-School for Young Ladies. Where are you going?"
"I don't know," admitted Ruby, unwillingly. It had never occurred to her to ask her Aunt Emma the name of the school; indeed I do not think that she knew that any school had a particular name any more than the school at home did. That was always called the school, and so Ruby had thought that this new school was simply a boarding-school. How dreadful it would be if Maude was going to a Boarding-School for Young Ladies, and she herself should be going to a school for children.