What a new world it was to Rotha! In the lower hall the girls took off bonnets and wraps, hanging them up on hooks arranged there. Then Antoinette took her up stairs, up a second flight of stairs, through halls and stairways which renewed Rotha's astonishment. Was this a school? All the arrangements seemed like those of an elegant private home; soft carpet was on the stairs, beautiful engravings hung on the walls. The school rooms filled the second floor; they were already crowded, it seemed to Rotha, with rows and ranks of scholars of all sizes, from ten years old up. Antoinette and she, being later than the rest, slipped into the first seats they could find, near the door.
There was deep silence and great order, and then Rotha heard a voice in the next room beginning to read a chapter in the Bible. The sound of the voice struck her and made her wish to get a sight of the reader; but that was impossible, for a bit of partition wall hid her and indeed most of the room in which she was from Rotha's view. So Rotha's attention concentrated itself upon what she could see. The pleasant, bright apartments; the desks before which sat so many well-dressed and well- looking girls; ah, they were very well dressed, and many of them, to her fancy, very richly dressed; as for the faces, she found there was the usual diversity. But what would anybody think of a girl coming among them so very shabby and meanly attired as she was? If she had known— However, self-consciousness was not one of Rotha's troubles, and soon in her admiration of the maps and pictures on the walls she almost forgot her own poor little person. She was aware that after the reading came a prayer; but though she knelt as others knelt, I am bound to say very little of the sense of the words found its way to her mind.
After that the girls separated. Rotha was introduced by her cousin to a certain Miss Blodgett, one of the teachers, under whose care she was placed, and by whom she was taken to a room apart and set down to her work along with a class of some forty girls, all of them or nearly all, younger than she was. And here, for a number of days, Rotha's school life went on monotonously. She was given little to do that she could not do easily; she was assigned no lessons that were not already familiar; she was put to acquire no knowledge that she did not already possess. She got sight of nobody but Miss Blodgett and the girls; for every morning she was sure to be crowded into that same corner at school-opening, where she could not look at Mrs. Mowbray; nobody else wanted that place, so they gave it to her; and Rotha was never good at self-assertion, unless at such times as her blood was up. She took the place meekly. But school was very tiresome to her; and it gave her nothing to distract her thoughts from her troubles at home.
Those were threefold, to take them in detail. She wore still the old dress; she was consequently still kept up stairs; and it followed also of course that Mr. Digby came and went and she had no sight of him. It happened thus.
Several days he allowed to pass without calling again. Not that he forgot Rotha, or was careless about her; but he partly knew his adversary and judged this course wise, for Rotha's sake. His first visit had been on Tuesday evening; he let a week go by, and then he went again. Mrs. Busby was engaged with other visitors; he had to post-pone the inquiries he wished to make. Meanwhile Antoinette attacked him.
"Mr. Southwode,—now it is a nice evening, and you promised;—will you take me to the Minstrels?"
"I always keep my promises."
"Then shall we go?" with great animation.
"Did I say I would go to-night?"
"No; but to-night is a good time; as good as any. Ah, Mr. Southwode! let us go. You'll never take me, if you do not to-night."