One morning, late in October, there was great excitement at Highland Hall. It was just at recess time and all the girls (except Maude Wilder and Debbie Clark who were under the porch foraging for pie) were on the veranda or the graveled walk. Two new pupils were arriving. They were not together for they came in separate hacks. The first was a large girl of fourteen who, followed by a small, meek father, marched fearlessly up the steps and looked each girl straight in the eye until she reached Sallie Dickinson, who stood in the doorway, smiling a welcome.
“I’m Victoria Webster of Iowa,” said she, “and I’ve come here to school. Where’s Doctor What d’ye-callum? I’ve come here after an education and I want it right away.”
And then Victoria deliberately turned and winked at the Miller girls; a real wink, with one bold blue eye wide open, the other shut. Victoria, the surprised girls perceived, was as fresh as a breeze from her own prairie, and they were instantly prepared to enjoy her.
The other hack disgorged its contents. An overdressed woman in ridiculous shoes stepped out; an overdressed girl in even more ridiculous shoes followed her. The girl, fair-haired and exceedingly fluffy was almost as violently perfumed as Madame Bolande herself.
Jean, Marjory, Bettie and Mabel glanced casually at this second young person and suddenly gasped. They had received a jolt. Then they looked inquiringly at one another and back again at the girl. They couldn’t quite believe their eyes.
“What’s her name?” demanded Marjory, when Sallie, who had escorted the last newcomers inside returned to the porch.
“Gladys de Milligan, of Milwaukee,” returned Sallie, holding her nose. “Her father must be a perfume factory.”
The Lakeville girls looked at one another again.
“Gladys de Milligan,” breathed Marjory.
“Laura Milligan!” gasped Mabel. “Of all things, Laura Milligan!”
“Hush,” warned Jean, a finger on her lips. “Come down on the lawn. We’ll have to talk this over by ourselves.”
“It’s Laura all right,” said Bettie. “Her hair’s a lot lighter than it used to be and she’s taller and much more elegant; but it’s the same turned up nose and the same twisty shoulders and the same small eyes, too close together.”
“And the same horrid mother,” said Mabel. “What shall we do?”
“Let’s not do anything,” counseled wise Jean. “Let’s wait and see if she recognizes us.”
“Perhaps anybody as grand as that,” offered Marjory, hopefully, “wouldn’t want to know plain blue serge folks like us. Of course we wouldn’t exactly want the Highland Hall girls to think she was an old friend of ours—”
“She wasn’t,” said Mabel, emphatically.
“Well,” argued Jean, “perhaps Laura has changed—certainly she has changed her name. It wouldn’t be quite fair or kind for us to tell the other girls the things we know about her. We can wait until we have her by herself before we seem to recognize her. And maybe she has improved—”
“She needed to,” said Marjory, sagely. “Shan’t we even tell Henrietta?”
“I don’t believe we need to,” returned Jean. “Henrietta won’t like her anyway. She’s too—well, too cheap. She isn’t Henrietta’s kind, you know.”
“The Milligans must have made money,” said Marjory. “They hadn’t any such clothes in Lakeville.”
“Lakeville would have dropped dead if they had,” giggled Bettie.
At first “Gladys” pretended not to recognize the little girls with whom she had once played in Lakeville; but, needing some one to show her the way to a class room, she waylaid Marjory in the hall and called her by name.
“Now, listen,” warned Gladys, shifting her gum to the other side of her mouth. “Don’t let anybody hear you calling me Laura. It isn’t my name any more. I always hated that name and Milligan, too. Mother calls me Gladys—Gladys Evelyn de Milligan.”
“What’s the ‘D’ for,” asked honest Marjory.
“That’s French,” explained Laura. “It’s d e, de.”
“But Milligan isn’t French.”
“It’s more elegant that way,” explained Laura, shifting her gum again. “We’re society people now. It looks better in print when Mother’s ‘Among those present.’ Now listen. Now that you know my name, see that you remember it. And tell those other Lakeville girls they can do the same thing.”
Although the Miller girls’ father supplied the world with soap, although three continents ate the breakfast food that Hazel Benton’s uncle manufactured, no one at Highland Hall paraded her wealth and her so-called “Social standing” as vulgar little Gladys de Milligan paraded hers. She was always painted and powdered and overdressed; she was reckless with her spending money, snobbish and artificial to the very final degree; yet, fortunately for gum-chewing Laura, there were girls who seemed to like her.
Most of the girls, however, liked Victoria Webster much better. To be sure Victoria had her faults, but they were pleasanter faults than Laura’s. Every one of the youngsters admired and tried to imitate Victoria’s marvelously perfect wink. Maude came the nearest to achieving success; and little Lillian Thwaite failed the most dismally.
“Don’t try it on a cold day,” warned Victoria, “you might freeze that way, Lillian, with your mouth half way up your cheek and your nose in a knot.”
It was a joy to see Victoria and Maude play ball. They went at it precisely like a pair of boys. And Victoria shared Maude’s affection for pie.
Madame Bolande liked Gladys Evelyn de Milligan but sarcastic Miss Woodruff did not. When she called upon that young person in class, she frequently pretended that she had forgotten her name, so that one day, to the great amusement of her classmates, Laura would be called Ambrosia Nectarine and the next Miss Woodruff would address her as Verbena Heliotrope, Gladiolus Violet or Lucretia Calliopsis or something else equally ridiculous; but a new one for every occasion. This, of course, wasn’t exactly kind or even quite courteous; but it is safe to say that Gladys Evelyn began to regret having changed and embellished her plain if not beautiful name. Perhaps, before Miss Woodruff had entirely exhausted her supply of fancy names, poor Gladys Evelyn may have envied little Jane Pool. No one ever forgot or pretended to forget Jane’s very brief and very plain name, except Doctor Rhodes, who forgot everybody’s.
Jane was a small girl with a very bright, eager face, smooth brown hair and a great deal of character. Just about everybody liked Jane.
“Are you related to those grand Chicago Pools?” asked Gladys Evelyn one day, as she peeled a fresh stick of gum.
“Mercy, no,” returned Jane, who had listened for a weary half hour to Laura’s tales about her own wonderful people. “There’s nothing grand about us—we’re just plain Pools—little common Pools like mud puddles. No limousines, no diamonds, no ancestors. Just three meals a day and a bed at night. We’re just folks—the commonest kind.”
And Gladys, not noticing the twinkle in Jane’s bright black eye, believed the little rascal, only to learn later that Jane’s father was accounted one of the wealthiest men in the state of Wisconsin. But you never would have known it from Jane.
“I wish,” complained Henrietta, one day, “we hadn’t been two days late in getting to this school. All the girls engaged their walking partners before we came. I like to walk with Victoria—she steps right off like a man—but Gladys Evelyn de Milligan—phew! With all those heels and that tight skirt she can’t walk. But I’ll say one thing for Gladys. She can chew gum.”
“We didn’t mean to leave you out when we four paired off,” assured Jean. “But Marjory asked me and Mabel asked Bettie—why, of course we can switch off sometimes. The old girls engaged their partners last year.”
These walks occurred three times a week. On Sundays, when the entire school walked two by two to church. On Tuesday, when the girls were taken, again in twos, to the village to shop; and on Fridays when they went to the cemetery. The only reason they went to the cemetery was because a walk of a mile and a half straight west ended there.
Sallie Dickinson usually walked with poor old Abbie Smith, the chaperon. Abbie was a forlorn creature, neither old nor young. She had a long red nose, a retreating chin, drooping shoulders and a rounded back. Colorless, straggling hair and pale eyes. A spineless, unpleasant person. Like Sallie Dickinson, she was an orphan. Like Sallie, poor old Abbie had been left penniless at Highland Hall, but at an earlier date. It was said that Abbie’s stepfather had deliberately abandoned her; and, looking at Abbie, it seemed not unlikely. One would have supposed that twenty years of school life would have educated Abbie but they hadn’t. Abbie was incapable of acquiring an education.
“When I look at Abbie,” confided Sallie, one day, as she laid an armful of freshly laundered garments on Jean’s bed, “it makes me just sick. Am I going to be like that twenty years from now?”
“Of course you’re not,” consoled Jean, “You’re ever so bright in school and you—why, Sallie! It’s all in your own hands. If you learn every blessed thing you can, some day you’ll be smart enough to teach. And then, probably, they’d be glad enough to have you teach right here. And if they wouldn’t, you could go some place else. Don’t ever think that you have to stay here and be a stupid, downtrodden servant like poor old Abbie.”
“Well, do you know,” said Sallie, visibly brightening, “I did think just exactly that. I wake up nights and worry about it. Oh, Jean! I do wish you’d poke me up once in awhile, whenever you see me losing my backbone or looking like Abbie—”
“You don’t look like Abbie—you couldn’t. Abbie never was pretty or bright and you are. Wait, I want to give you these history notes I dug up—I know they kept you busy all study hour sorting the clean clothes so of course you didn’t have time to look anything up. You’ll just have to have splendid marks from now on.”
“You’re a darling!” cried Sallie, rubbing her cheek against Jean’s. “I wish you’d reached Hiltonburg a whole lot sooner. I needed you.”