"Come on, Alma. Hurry! You haven't even washed yet," said Nancy, impatiently. "We've got to go down-stairs——"
"Yes, and stand around gaping like ninnies," added Alma, morosely, coming back to the mirror, and beginning to brush out her thick, yellow hair.
"It'll be ever so much nicer when we come back here after the Christmas holidays," said Nancy, busily polishing her nails, to hide the mist that would creep over her eyes. "To-morrow we can fix up this room a bit—if we can put up some chintz curtains, and get a few books and cushions around, it'll be as good as home, almost."
"But—but Mother won't be here, and neither will Hannah—boo-hoo!" And here Alma quite suddenly burst out crying, wrinkling up her pretty face like a child of two. With the tears dripping off her chin, she continued to brush her hair vigorously, sobbing and sniffling pathetically. Nancy looked up, and, unable any longer to control her own tears, while at the same time she was almost hysterically amused by Alma's ridiculously droll expression of grief, began to sob and giggle alternately. Alma, still clutching the brush, promptly threw herself into Nancy's arms, and there they sat, clinging together, and frankly wailing like a pair of lost children, in full view of the corridor.
"I—I want to—g-go h-home——" sniffled Alma.
"I—I don't like that girl with th-the n-nose——" wailed Nancy. "D-Do f-fix your hair, Alma. I-If you're l-late for d-dinner w-we'll be expelled. Here——" she tried to twist up Alma's unruly mane, hardly realizing what she was trying to do, while Alma tenderly mopped Nancy's wet cheeks with her own little, soaking handkerchief.
"I—I say! You two aren't howling, are you?" inquired a drawling, utterly amazed voice from the doorway. The two girls looked up, their hostile expressions plainly asking whose business it was if they were howling—but promptly their hostility vanished.
A very tall, astonishingly lank girl was standing in the doorway, feet apart, and hands clasped behind her back, regarding them amiably through a pair of enormous, bone-rimmed goggles. Every now and again, she would blink her eyes, and screw up her face comically, while she continued to smile, showing a set of teeth as large and white as pebbles.
"You were saying something about being expelled. Are you expelled already? Ex plus pello, pellere pulsi pulsum—meaning to push out, or, as we say in the vernacular, to kick out, fire, bounce. Miss Drinkwater likes us to note the Latin derivations of all our English words, and I've got the habit. You two seem to be lachrymosus, or blue—by which I take it that you are new girls. I sympathize with you, although I am an ancient. Two years ago this very night, I wept so hard that I nearly gave my roommate pneumonia from the dampness. How-do-you-do?" With this unconventional preliminary, accompanied by one of the friendliest and most disarming grins imaginable, the newcomer marched over to the bed and shook hands vigorously.
"My name is Charlotte Lucretia Adela Spencer. Really it is. You must take my word for it. But I only use the 'Charlotte.' The others I keep in case of emergency. I room next door, with Mildred Lloyd—who, incidentally, is a perfect lady, while I am not. I was born in the year 1903, in the city of Denver, Colorado—but of that, more anon. It's tremendously interesting, but if you—is your name Alma?—if you don't get your coiffure coifed, you'll miss out on our evening repast. Wiggle, my dear, wiggle!"