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Read Ebook: Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School by Whitehill Dorothy Wrenn Charles L Charles Lewis Illustrator
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Ebook has 1855 lines and 49520 words, and 38 pages
Betty took heart and led the way.
Lois was right, though the doleful sobs that met their ears at the door of Junior Mansions--nicknamed the year before because the present Seniors had been so very elegant--could hardly be called luck.
"Jemima!" Betty exclaimed. "A deluge, our search proves fruitful at last."
Polly went to the door through which the sounds came and pushed it open.
The room was dark. The light from the hall cast a streak over the bare floor and discovered a heap of something half on, and half off the bed. At one side of the room a wicker suitcase stood beside the dresser, its swelling sides proclaimed it still unpacked. A hat and coat were flung on the chair--but these were minor details. The heart-breaking sobs filled every corner of the room, and the figure on the bed heaved convulsively with each one.
Polly was the first to speak.
"What's the matter, homesick?" she asked cheerfully as she pressed the electric button and flooded the room with light.
On closer inspection they saw that the girl had heaps of black hair that had become unfastened and lay in a heavy coil on the bed. Also, she had on a crumpled silk waist and a dark green skirt.
Lois and Betty helped her on to the bed and Polly bathed her face with cold water. Angela was tongue-tied, but she patted her hand and murmured incoherent things. Finally the sobs stopped.
"We've got to get her out of here," Lois whispered. "Don't you want to do up your hair and come down to the Assembly Hall?" she said aloud. "Everybody's dancing."
The new girl--she was still just the new girl, for she had refused to tell her name, or say one word--sat up and smoothed her waist.
Betty sighed with relief.
"Come on, that's right," she said encouragingly. "Don't mind about your eyes, all the other new girls will have red ones too. Why when I was a new girl," she said grandly, "I cried for weeks."
Polly and Lois and Angela gasped. Betty had never been known to shed a tear. As for weeks of them, that was a bit extravagant. But the fib had the desired effect. The new girl turned her large, drenched gray eyes on Betty and studied her carefully.
"I reckon you looked something like a picked buzzard when you got through," she said with a broad Southern accent.
There was an astonished silence for a second, then the girls burst into peals of laughter. It was contagious, happy laughter, and the new girl, after a hesitating minute, joined in. After that, it was an easy matter to make conversation and to persuade her to leave her room.
The girls found out that she was Fanny Gerard, and had come straight from South Carolina. Her father--she had no mother--had brought her to school and then returned to the city by the next train. Unfortunately, it had been Miss Hale, the Latin teacher--nicknamed the Spartan years before by Betty, the only unpopular teacher in Seddon Hall--who had shown Fanny to her room.
"She just opened the do' and pointed at that little old plain room with her bony finger and said: 'This is you alls room, Miss Gerard,' and left me. I tell you I like to died."
The tears threatened to burst forth again. Betty and Polly hastened to explain that the Spartan was not even to be considered as part of Seddon Hall. And they brought back the smiles when they explained that the Bridge of Sighs was so named because the Spartan's room was at the end of it.
All together, they made a very satisfactory cure and when they left Fanny for the night, after having unpacked her suitcase for her, she was quite bright and contented.
"What do you think of her?" Polly demanded, when she and Lois were alone, after the good night bell.
Lois considered a minute.
"She's rare, and I think she's going to be worth cultivating. Certainly she's funny," she said.
"Seddon Hallish, you mean?" Polly inquired.
"No, not exactly."
"She couldn't take Connie's place for instance?"
"Never in a thousand years!"
"Lois."
"Yes."
"You're thinking about the same thing I am."
"What are you thinking of?"
"The five boy's pictures she brought in her suitcase."
"Yes, I was. Sort of silly of her. Maybe they are her brothers."
"They're not, she's an only child."
"Well, all Southern girls are sentimental." Polly was almost asleep.
"Maybe we can cure her," she said.
"Maybe," Lois answered drowsily.
"We're Seniors, Lo."
"Yes. This is the first night of our last year."
"I know, pretty much all right rooming together, isn't it?"
"You bet."
"Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
A CLASS MEETING
"Really Lo, I think its downright inconsiderate of you to be for Princeton." Polly was standing on a chair which threatened every minute to topple from its precarious position on her bed and she was struggling with a huge Harvard banner. She made the above statement with spirit.
Lois, on the other side of the room, was in nearly the same position, only she was struggling with a Princeton banner.
"I don't see why," she answered Polly's remark casually, and went on tacking.
"Because that awful orange color simply fights with my crimson. We can't have them in the same room."
Lois descended to the floor and surveyed the two banners.
"No, we can't," she said decidedly. "Mine goes better with the room than yours, don't you think?" she asked, after a pause, with just a little too much show at indifference.
"No, I don't." Polly's reply was prompt. "Color scheme doesn't matter to me anyway, but Bob's flag is going up somewhere."
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