Nancy looked at her sympathetically, but she felt much too blue and strange herself to try to urge anyone else to be cheerful.
"I don't know where we go, or what we're supposed to do, do you?" she whispered to Alma.
"No. I hope to goodness it's near supper time. There, I think that's Miss Leland."
A tall, very thin, very erect lady, wearing nose-glasses attached to a long gold chain, and with sparkling, fluffy white hair that made her face look quite brown in contrast, was descending the stairs. Several of the girls rushed to her, and she kissed them peckishly. Evidently they were old pupils. Nancy and Alma heard her asking them about their dear mothers and their charming fathers, and where they had been during the summer, and if (playfully) they were going to work very, very hard. And the girls were saying:
"Dear Miss Leland, it's so nice to be back again!"
Nancy and Alma approached her a little uncertainly. The other girls drew back and frankly stared at them. "New girls," they heard whispered, and for some reason the appellation made them both feel terribly "out of it."
"Miss Leland," began Nancy, coloring, "I—I'm Anne Prescott—I—this is my sister Alma—I—er——"
"Why, yes. I'm so glad you got here safely," said Miss Leland, quite cordially, taking Nancy's hand and Alma's at the same time. "Of course you want to know where your room is. You two are going to room together to-night, anyway. Later you will probably have different roommates. Now, let me see—Mildred, this is Anne Prescott, and this is Alma. They are new girls, so I'm going to count on you to help them find themselves a little. They are going to be next door to you to-night, so will you take them up-stairs?"
A very handsome, very haughty-looking girl, with gray eyes and a Roman nose, shook hands with them briefly. The sisters followed her in a subdued silence. She was the sort of girl plainly destined to become one of the most frigid and formidable of dowagers; it was impossible to look at her profile, her fur coat, or to meet her cold, critical glance without immediately picturing her with a lorgnon, crisply marcelled gray hair, and the wintry smile with which the typical, unapproachable matron can freeze out the slightest attempt at an unwelcome friendliness on the part of an inconsequential person. Her last name was weighty with importance, since she was the daughter of Marshall Lloyd, the well-known railroad magnate.
"I shan't like her," Nancy remarked to Alma, when this young lady had indicated their room to them, and left them with a curt announcement that they should go down-stairs in fifteen minutes.