CHAPTER XIII
THE ENGLISH TEACHER
"Aren't they awfully nice?" cried Sadie, as the three girl chums rushed about in a flurried effort to make themselves presentable for their first meal at Laurel Hall.
"Lovely! But for goodness' sake, which one of you girls has my brush and comb?" This from Nan as she looked frantically for something with which to smooth her ruffled fair hair.
"I'd suggest you look in your grip," said Jo dryly, and received a gloomy stare from her best friend.
"Idiot! Do you think I haven't?"
"Here it is." Sadie came pacifically into the breach, handing Nan her lost articles.
"Where did you get 'em?" grumbled Nan, in no mood to be pacified.
"On the bed, where you put them yourself," retorted Sadie. "You don't think I opened your old grip, do you?"
"Stop fighting!" This came from Jo as she dipped her face into a basin of clear cold water and came up sputtering and rosy. "We have about two minutes to get ready."
Thanks to the sociability of their new friends, they had no time to change their dresses. But whisk brooms were brought forth, collars and belts smoothed into place, and shoes rubbed with a cloth for want of time to polish them.
This concession to respectability together with freshly washed faces and smooth, shining hair wrought a pleasing change in the girls. When the supper gong rang they looked as well groomed as though they had just been freshly tubbed and had had a change of clothes from head to foot.
Jessie Robinson was true to her promise and appeared at their door just as the supper gong rang.
"Doris and Gladys are still primping," she explained, out of breath with haste. "Miss Jane can't bear tardiness, so I told them I'd come on without them. Are you ready?"
"All ready," said Jo, and added with exasperation: "Except Sade, who seems to have gone back to the wash basin!"
"I found a smudge on the side of my nose," Sadie explained, rubbing the offending spot vigorously as she hurried toward them. "Is it off now?" anxiously.
"If it isn't, it won't be," replied Jo. "Come on!"
But Nan added reassuringly.
"All O. K., Sadie dear. You're as fresh as the flowers in June—or is it May?"
Jessie led them through the hall and down the broad flight of stairs that they had already twice ascended. They met other groups of girls and mingled with them in a happy spirit of comradeship.
"Our first meal at Laurel Hall!" Sadie surreptitiously squeezed Jo's hand as they neared a large door through which floated appetizing odors. "Isn't it scrumptious?"
Jo only smiled in answer, for they had reached the dining hall.
"There's Miss Tully—the teacher in charge this week," Jessie said. "She will assign you your places at table."
The three Woodford girls regarded Miss Tully with interest, as being the first of the faculty, with the exception of Miss Romaine, whom they had yet seen.
Miss Tully was of medium height. She was very thin, almost, the new girls thought, the thinnest person they had ever seen. She wore her hair drawn severely back from a severe brow and her gray eyes, small and bright under level brows, carried out this general impression of severity.
All in all, from the moment of looking at Miss Tully the three chums found themselves in awe of her and avoided the glance of that hard gray eye with dexterity. Miss Tully, while being an excellent disciplinarian, was not popular with the girls of Laurel Hall nor with the rest of the faculty.
"Gracious, I hope they're not all like her!" whispered Nan Harrison irrepressibly, and was treated to a nudge by Jo.
"Keep still!" she whispered back. "Do you want her to put you in the dungeon?"
Miss Tully was indeed glancing in their direction with a contraction of her heavy brows that might have been disapproval. In this case it was merely mental concentration, but the girls could not have been expected to know that.
"Your names, young ladies?" asked the teacher, as Jessie drew her new friends forward.
The girls introduced themselves and were relieved when that frown of concentration turned from them to a slip Miss Tully held in her hand.
"You are at the third table," she told them finally. "Third, fourth, and fifth seats from the foot. Show them their places, Jessie, if you please," and she turned her attention to the next group of new girls entering the room.
"Glory! You're at my table!" whispered Jessie, as she piloted the girls down the long room. "And, even better than that, your seats are right next to Doris and me!"
This was a very happy arrangement for the chums. They felt that, instead of living for a certain period of time among strange girls with whom they would have to become acquainted by degrees, they had fallen into the hands of friends.
"You are making it mighty nice for us," Jo whispered, and Jessie answered only with a bright smile.
The dining hall was a long narrow room with windows along one entire side of it. Since the chums knew that Laurel Hall accommodated at the least eighty students and at the most ninety, they were prepared for the thought that the dining hall must be of a considerable size to seat them all at meals.
Long, tables furnished the room, and at these almost all the girls of Laurel Hall were already assembled.
Table three proved to be at the foot of the long room, but near the cheerful bright stretch of windows. From these windows the view was beautiful and even included a small portion of the lake.
The pleasure of the chums at being placed close to their new friends was tempered by a discovery they made as they drew their chairs out from the table. Directly opposite them, sat Kate Speed and her meek little shadow, Lily Darrow!
"I had no idea that you were to sit at our table or I might have warned you," Jessie whispered, noting Jo's glance of annoyance. "Never mind, Kate can't bite at meals. Not with Miss Tully in charge!"
Kate Speed, who had been talking across a vacant place to a girl on her side of the table, happened to look up at this moment.
She stared at the three girls who—most innocently—occupied the room she coveted. She then caught the laughing, teasing gaze of Jessie Robinson.
Kate stiffened and tossed her head with an air of haughty disdain. Without deigning to recognize the presence of the girls with whom she had been so effusively friendly on the train, she turned and began an ostentatious conversation with quiet Lily Darrow.
Jo nudged Nan, who was sitting next to her.
"Cut—by cricky!" she chuckled, and then exchanged laughing glances with Sadie, on the other side of Nan.
Meanwhile Jessie was glancing nervously over her shoulder. The two vacant seats at the foot of the table belonged to Doris Maybel and Gladys Holt. Neither of the girls had come in yet, although Miss Tully had assigned the last new girl her seat and was about to take her own place at the head of table one.
"I feel sorry for them if they're late," whispered Jessie in response to Jo's question. "They ought to know better—with Tully in charge!"
At the moment there was a stir at the door and Jessie looked hopeful. But it was only Miss Jane Romaine, come to have a word with the teacher in charge.
Jessie's foot began to tap the floor—tap—tap—under the edge of the table.
"There they are!" cried Nan suddenly, as two guilty heads poked in at the door.