"Dum and Dee may be having a fine effect, too," laughed Miss Sayre, "but a girl named Page Allison is doing her part. All the faculty notice it. I wish someone like you could be in every class, someone to leaven the whole lump with a certain quality of camaraderie. Annie Pore was as forlorn a specimen of humanity as ever stepped out of a 'bus that first day here, and now look at her!"
Annie was laughing heartily as Mary Flannigan made a noise like a sick kitten, throwing her voice, with her powers as a ventriloquist, so it seemed to come from a clump of sumac by the roadside. Dee was peering eagerly into the bushes before she caught on to the joke. Annie Pore certainly did not look like the same girl. No one would think of nicknaming her "Orphan Annie" now. The name clung to her, however, among a certain class, thanks to Mabel Binks, who had not been able to forgive or forget the laugh raised against her by Annie on the first day of school.
Hill-Top was built much in the same style as Gresham, and it, too, had the Parthenon effect with its big white pillars. The view was not quite so fine as ours, but from the little experience I had had of boys, I imagined they did not go in for views to any great extent.
"A primrose by the river's brink,
A common primrose was to him and nothing more."
For that matter, I noticed that mighty few of the girls at Gresham appreciated the view, and as Miss Sayre said, thought more of dessert for dinner than of the view of the mountains.
The game was just starting as we arrived, so we seated ourselves on the benches provided for the visitors with as little stir as possible. Dum got on the other side of me to put me on to the points of the great game of football.
"It seems too foolish and backwoodsy for me never to have seen a game," I said, "but at Milton everyone is too old to do more than walk through a set of croquet or too young to do more than bounce a rubber ball. Father occasionally threatens to go up to Richmond for the Virginia-Carolina game at Thanksgiving, but somebody is always coming or going (I mean getting born or dying), and we have never made it yet."
"Never mind, honey," and Dum gave me a hug, "you'll learn all the points of the game to-day, and some time when we are back in Richmond, Zebedee will give us a great football party. We always go to the Thanksgiving game. I don't see what Zebedee will do without us this year."
"Who, that good-looking pa of yours?" said Mabel Binks, who was seated right in front of us, with the Juniors, as usual. "Why, I'll wager he can find someone to take your place. I bet he's having a pretty good time with you kids off his hands."