"Well, even if my dresses are not as pretty as yours, Maude, the girls won't think that it is your fault. Here comes Aunt Emma. Won't she be surprised to find that I know somebody here in this strange place?"
Aunt Emma was quite as surprised as Ruby had supposed she would be, and presently Maude's mamma came up, and was very glad to find that Maude was going to have an old friend for a school-fellow.
"Ruby is a good little girl, and she will keep Maude straight, I hope," she said to Ruby's aunt; and it was all Ruby could do to keep from looking as proud as she felt, to think that Maude's mamma should say that she was a good little girl.
Ruby did not feel as if she quite deserved the praise, but it was very pleasant nevertheless. She made up her mind that she would really try to be good and keep from getting angry at Maude when she said provoking things, and if possible she would help Maude to be good instead of doing wrong things that she proposed.
By this time all the trunks were in the wagon and on their way to the school; and Ruby and Maude, with Aunt Emma and Mrs. Birkenbaum, set out to walk, for it was not a very great distance.
The two little girls walked together in front, and the ladies came after more slowly.
"I wonder what boarding-school will be like," said Ruby presently.
"I suppose it will be perfectly dreadful," said Maude. "I know some girls that went to boarding-school once, and they told me that it was awful. They never had enough to eat, and they had to study all the time, and they got so homesick that they tried to run away, but the teacher caught them and brought them back again."
Ruby looked horrified.
"Do you spose that was really true that they did not have enough to eat?" she asked.