Marion found her trunk in her room unstrapped, and, tired as she was, began to make preparations for spending the night there.
She did not suppose for a moment it was to be permanently hers, but fell asleep wondering what could be next in waiting for her.
CHAPTER III.
GLADYS HAS A ROOM-MATE.
When Dorothy left Marion at the call of the gong for study hours she went at once to her own room.
She had two room-mates, both her cousins; one, Gladys Philbrick, was a Florida girl, the only child of a wealthy owner of several orange-groves. She was motherless, and needed a woman’s care, and the advantages of a Northern education, so her father sent her to live with relatives in the small seaport town of Rock Cove.
The other, Susan Downer, was the child of a sister of Mr. Philbrick; her father followed the sea, and her brother, almost the one boy in Rock Cove who did not look upon a sailor life as the only one worth living, was at the present time a student at the academy at Atherton, only a few miles from Montrose. Dorothy herself was the child of a fisherman—her own mother dead, and she left under the care of a weak stepmother, whose numerous family of small children had made Dorothy’s life one of constant hardship.
When Mr. Philbrick, in one of his visits to Gladys at the North, became acquainted with this little 17 group of cousins, he had no hesitation—being not only an educated man, but also one of a great heart and generous nature—in making plans for their future education. In carrying these out, he had sent Jerry Downer to Atherton; Gladys, Susan, and Dorothy to Montrose.