“I don’t know. Nobody told us that there were any rows.”
“Oh, yes! Shaker Row and Quaker Row and Attic Row. Attic Row is the
nicest, because it’s highest up, and furthest away from Mrs. Florence.
My room is in Attic Row. Annie Silsbie and I engaged it last term.
You’ll be in Quaker Row, I guess. Most of the new girls are.”
“Is that a nice row?” asked Clover, greatly interested.
“Pretty nice. It isn’t so good as Attic, but it’s ever so much better than Shaker; Because there you’re close to Mrs. Florence, and can’t have a bit of fun without her hearing you. I’d try to get the end room, if I were you. Mary Andrews and I had it once. There is a splendid view of Berry Searles’s window.”
“Berry Searles?”
“Yes; President Searles, you know; his youngest son. He’s an elegant fellow. All the girls are cracked about him,—perfectly cracked! The president’s house is next door to the Nunnery, you know; and Berry rooms at the very end of the back building, just opposite Quaker Row. It used to be such fun! He’d sit at his window, and we’d sit at ours, in silent study hour, you know; and he’d pretend to read, and all the time keep looking over the top of his book at us, and trying to make us laugh. Once Mary did laugh right out; and Miss Jane heard her, and came in. But Berry is just as quick as a flash, and he ducked down under the window-sill; so she didn’t see him. It was such fun!”
“Who’s Miss Jane?” asked Katy.
“The horridest old thing. She’s Mrs. Florence’s niece, and engaged to a missionary. Mrs. Florence keeps her on purpose to spy us girls, and report when we break the rules. Oh, those rules! Just wait till you come to read ‘em over. They’re nailed up on all the doors,— thirty-two of them, and you can’t help breaking ‘em if you try ever so much.”
“What are they? what sort of rules?” cried Katy and Clover in a breath.
“Oh! about being punctual to prayers, and turning you mattress, and smoothing over the under-sheet before you leave your room, and never speaking a word in the hall, or in private study hour, and hanging your towel on your own nail in the wash-room, and all that.”
“Wash-room? what do you mean?” said Katy, aghast.
“At the head of Quaker Row, you know. All the girls wash there, except on Saturdays when they go to the bath-house. You have your own bowl and soap-dish, and a hook for you towel. Why, what’s the matter? How big your eyes are!”
“I never heard any thing so horrid!” cried Katy, when she had recovered her breath. “Do you really mean that girls don’t have wash-stands in their own rooms?”
“You’ll get used to it. All the girls do,” responded Lilly.
“I don’t want to get used to it,” said Katy, resolving to appeal to papa; but papa had gone into the smoking-car, and she had to wait. Meantime Lilly went on talking.
“If you have that end room in Quaker Row, you’ll see all the fun that goes on at commencement time. Mrs. Searles always has a big party, and you can look right in, and watch the people and the supper-table, just as if you were there. Last summer, Berry and Alpheus Seccomb got a lot of cakes and mottoes from the table and came out into the yard, and threw them up one by one to Rose Red and her room-mate. They didn’t have the end room, though; but the one next to it.”
“What a funny name!—Rose Red,” said Clover.
“Oh! her real name is Rosamond Redding; but the girls call her Rose Red. She’s the greatest witch in the school; not exactly pretty, you know, but sort of killing and fascinating. She’s always getting into the most awful scrapes. Mrs. Florence would had expelled her long ago, if she hadn’t been such a favorite; and Mr. Redding’s daughter, beside. He’s a member of Congress, you know, and all that; and Mrs. Florence is quite proud of having Rose in her school.
“Berry Searles is so funny!” she continued. “His mother is a horrid old thing, and always interfering with him. Sometimes when he has a party of fellows in his room, and they’re playing cards, we can see her coming with her candle through the house; and when she gets to his door, she tries it, and then she knocks, and calls out, ‘Abernathy, my son!’ And the fellows whip the cards into their pockets, and stick the bottles under the table, and get out their books and dictionaries like a flash; and when Berry unlocks the door, there they sit, studying away; and Mrs. Searles looks so disappointed! I thought I should die one night, Mary Andrews and I laughed so.”
I verily believe that if Dr. Carr had been present at this conversation, he would have stopped at the next station, and taken the girls back to Burnet. But he did not return from the smoking-car till the anecdotes about Berry were finished, and Lilly had begun again on Mrs. Florence.
“She’s a sort of queen, you know. Everybody minds her. She’s tall, and always dresses beautifully. Her eyes are lovely; but, when she gets angry, they’re perfectly awful. Rose Red says she’d rather face a mad bull any day than Mrs. Florence in a fury; and Rose ought to know, for she’s had more reprimands than any girl in school.”
“How many girls are there?” inquired Dr. Carr.
“There were forty-eight last term. I don’t know how many there’ll be this, for they say Mrs. Florence is going to give up. It’s she who makes the school so popular.”
All this time the train was moving northward. With every mile the country grew prettier. Spring had not fairly opened; but the grass was green, and the buds on the tress gave a tender mist-like color to the woods. The road followed the river, which here and there turned upon itself in long links and windings. Ranges of blue hills closed the distance. Now and then a nearer mountain rose, single and alone, from the plain. The air was cool, and full of brilliant zest, which the Western girls had never before tasted. Katy felt as if she were drinking champagne. She and Clover flew from window to window, exclaiming with such delight that Lilly was surprised.
“I can’t see what there is to make such a fuss about,” she remarked.
“That’s only Deerfield. It’s quite a small place.”
“But how pretty it looks, nestled in among the hills! Hills are lovely, Clover, aren’t they?”
“These hills are nothing. You should see the White Mountains,” said the experienced Lilly. “Ma and I spent three weeks at the Profile House last vacation. It was perfectly elegant.”
In the course of the afternoon, Katy drew papa away to a distant seat, and confided her distress about the wash-stands.
“Don’t you think it is horrid, papa? Aunt Izzie always said that it isn’t lady-like not to take a sponge-bath every morning; but how can we, with forty-eight girls in the room? I don’t see what we are going to do.”
“I fancy we can arrange it; don’t be distressed, my dear,” replied Dr. Carr. And Katy was satisfied; for when papa undertook to arrange things, they were very apt to be done.
It was almost evening when they reached their final stopping place.
“Now, two miles in the stage, and then we’re at the horrid old
Nunnery,” said Lilly. “Ugh! look at that snow. It never melts here
till long after it’s all gone at home. How I do hate this station!
I’m going to be awfully homesick: I know I am.”
But just then she caught sight of the stagecoach, which stood waiting; and her mood changed, for the stage was full of girls who had come by the other train.
“Hurrah! there’s Mary Edwards and Mary Silver,” she exclaimed; “and I declare, Rose Red! O you precious darling! how do you do?” Scrambling up the steps, who plunged