Marjorie Dean, High School Freshman Part 4

Marjorie walked down the aisle behind Muriel, looking rather worried.

Then she touched Muriel's arm. "I think I'd rather stop and speak to Miss Merton," she said with soft decision.

"All right," the response came indifferently as Muriel, a bored look on her youthful face, walked on ahead.

Marjorie walked bravely up to the teacher. "Miss Merton, I have arranged my studies and recitation hours. Miss Harding is going to show me the way to the English composition cla.s.s."

Miss Merton stared coldly at the girl's vivid, colorless face, framed in its soft brown curls. Her own youth had been prim and narrow, and she felt that she almost hated this girl whose expressive features gave promise of remarkable personality and abundant joy of living.

"Very well." The disagreeable note of dismissal in the teacher's voice angered Marjorie.

"I'll never again speak to her unless it's positively necessary," she resolved resentfully. "I wish I'd taken Miss Harding's advice."

"Well, did she snap your head off?" inquired Muriel as Marjorie joined her.

"No," was the brief answer.

"It's a wonder. There goes the third bell. It's on to English comp for us. I won't have time to introduce you to the girls. We'll have to wait until noon. Miss Flint teaches English. She's a dear, and everyone likes her."

Muriel's voice dropped on her last speech, for they were now entering the cla.s.sroom. At the first flat-topped desk in one corner of the room sat a small, fair woman with a sweet, suns.h.i.+ny face that quite won Marjorie to her.

"Miss Flint, this is Miss Dean," began Muriel, as they stopped before the desk. "She is a freshman and has just been registered in the study hall by Miss Merton."

A long, earnest glance pa.s.sed between teacher and pupil, then Marjorie felt her hand taken between two small, warm palms. "I am sure Miss Dean and I are going to be friends," said a sweet, rea.s.suring voice that amply made up for Miss Merton's stiffness. "Are you a stranger in Sanford, my dear? I am sure I have never seen you before."

"We have lived here a week," smiled Marjorie. "We moved here from B----."

"How interesting. Were you a student of Franklin High School? I have a dear friend who teaches English there."

"Oh!" exclaimed Marjorie, her eyes sparkling, "do you mean Miss Fielding?"

"Yes," returned Miss Flint. "We were best friends during our college days, too. Hampton College is our alma mater."

"That is where I hope to go when I finish high school. Miss Fielding has told me so many nice things about Hampton," was Marjorie's eager reply.

Then she added impetuously, "I'm going to like Sanford, too. I'm quite sure of it."

"That is the right spirit in which to begin your work here," was the instant response. "I will a.s.sign you to that last seat in the third row.

We do not change seats. Each girl is given her own place for the year."

Marjorie thanked Miss Flint, and made her way to the seat indicated. The sound of footsteps in the corridor had ceased. A tall girl in the front row of desks slipped from her seat and closed the door. Miss Flint rose, faced her cla.s.s, and the recitation began.

After the cla.s.s was dismissed Miss Flint detained Marjorie for a moment to ask a few questions regarding her text and note books. Muriel waited in the corridor. Her face wore an expression of extreme satisfaction.

It looked as though the new freshman might be a distinct addition to the critical little company of girls who had set themselves as rulers and arbiters of the freshman cla.s.s. She was pretty, wore lovely clothes, lived in a big house in a select neighborhood, had played center on a city basketball team, and was the friend of Miss Flint's friend. To be sure, Mignon La Salle might raise some objection to the newcomer. Mignon was so unreasonably jealous. But for all her money, Mignon must not be allowed always to have her own way. Muriel was sure the rest of the girls would be quite in favor of adding Marjorie Dean to their number.

They needed one more girl to complete their s.e.xtette. To Marjorie should fall the honor.

"I'll introduce her to the girls this noon, and let them look her over.

Then I'll have a talk with them to-night and see what they think,"

planned Muriel as she went back to the study hall at Marjorie's side.

There was a hurried exchange of books, then Marjorie was rushed off to her algebra recitation. Here she found herself at least two weeks ahead of the others, and was able to solve a problem at the blackboard that had puzzled several members of the cla.s.s, thereby winning a reputation for herself as a mathematician to which it afterward proved anything but easy to live up to.

While in both her English and algebra cla.s.ses Marjorie had searched the room with alert eyes for the girl who looked like Mary. She felt vaguely disappointed. She had hoped to come into closer contact with her. She liked Muriel, she decided, but she did not altogether understand her half-cordial, half-joking manner. She was rather glad that she was to go to her French cla.s.s alone. She had told Muriel not to bother. She could find the cla.s.sroom by herself.

As she clicked down the short, left-hand, third floor corridor, she saw just ahead of her a little blue-clad figure pa.s.sing through the very doorway for which she was making. An instant and she too had entered the room. She stared about her, then walked to a seat directly opposite to the one now occupied by the girl that looked like Mary. For a brief moment the girl eyed Marjorie indifferently, then something in the scrutiny of the other girl evidently annoyed her. She drew her straight dark brows together in a displeased frown, and deliberately turned her face away.

By this time perhaps a dozen girls had entered, and, as the clang of the third bell echoed through the school, an alert little man with a thin, sensitive face and timid brown eyes, bustled into the room and carefully closed the door. Hardly had he taken his hand from the k.n.o.b when the door was flung open, this time to admit a sharp-featured girl with bright, dark eyes and a cruel, thin-lipped mouth. Smiling maliciously, she swung the door shut with an echoing bang. The meek little professor looked reproachfully at the offender, who did not even appear to see him.

"The Evil Genius," recognized Marjorie. Her eyes strayed furtively toward the Mary girl, who had not paid the slightest attention to this late arrival. "What a hateful person that black-eyed girl is," ran on Marjorie's thoughts. "I know it was she who made that nice girl cry the other day. I wish she wasn't quite so distant. The nice girl, I mean.

Oh, dear. I forgot to go up to the professor's desk and register. That's his fault. He came in late. He'll see me in a minute and ask who I am."

To her extreme surprise, the little man paid no particular attention to her, but, opening his grammar, began the giving out of the next day's lesson. This he explained volubly and with many gestures. Marjorie's lips curved into a half smile as she compared this rather noisy instructor with Professor Rousseau, of Franklin. Later, when he called upon his pupils to recite, however, he was a different being. His politely sarcastic arraignment of those who floundered through the lessons, accompanied by certain ominous marks he placed after their names in a fat black book that lay on his desk, plainly showed that, despite his mild appearance, he was a force yet to be reckoned with.

"I hope he doesn't notice me until cla.s.s is over," fidgeted Marjorie.

"It surely must be time for that bell to ring." She began nervously to count those who were due to recite before her turn came. It would be so embarra.s.sing to do her explaining before this group of strange girls, particularly before the Evil Genius. Ah, she had begun to read! And how beautifully she read French! The critical professor was listening to the smooth flow of words that tripped from her tongue with approbation written on every feature. "She must have studied French before,"

speculated Marjorie, as the professor directed the next girl to go on with the exercise; "or else she is French. I believe she is. Oh, dear, only two more girls."

Clang! sounded the bell.

"Thank goodness," breathed the relieved freshman.

There was a general closing of books. "To-morrow I shall geev you a wreetten test," warned Professor Fontaine. Then the second bell rang, and the cla.s.s filed out of the room.

"Eet ees not strange that I haf overlooked you, Mademoiselle," explained Professor Fontaine five minutes later, after listening to Marjorie's apology for not presenting herself to him before cla.s.s. "The freshmen like to make so many alterations in their programs. They haf soch good excuses for changeeng cla.s.ses, but, sometimes, too, they do not tell me. Eet maks exasperation." He waved his hands comprehensively. "I am pleased," he added, with true French courtesy, "to haf another pupil.

Ees eet that you like the French, Mademoiselle Dean?"

"It is a beautiful language, Professor Fontaine," Marjorie a.s.sured him.

"I have only begun learning it, but I like it so much."

"C'est vrai," murmured the delighted professor. "La Francais est une belle langue. If, then, you like it, you weel study your lessons, n'est pas?"

"I'll try very hard to make good recitations. I will bring my books to-morrow. We used the same grammar at Franklin High School."

Marjorie hastened back to the study hall to find it empty. The clock on the north wall pointed significant hands to ten minutes past twelve. The Picture Girl had said that she wished Marjorie to meet her friends, but she was not waiting. It was disappointing, but her own fault, thought the lonely freshman as she left the study hall and went slowly downstairs to the locker room. She gave an impatient sigh as she pinned on her hat. Exploring new territory wasn't half so interesting as she could wish. Then a light footstep sounded at her side. A dignified little voice said, stiffly, "Will you please allow me to get my hat?"

Marjorie whirled about in amazement. Could she believe her eyes? The voice belonged to the Mary girl; they were to share the same locker.

CHAPTER VI

THE PLEDGE

"Oh, I am so glad we are to have a locker together!" exclaimed Marjorie, impulsively. "I've been very anxious to know you. I really owe you an apology. I spoke to you in the street the other day. I don't know what you thought of me, but you look so much like my dearest chum in B---- that I called to you before I realized what I was doing."

The other girl regarded Marjorie with the suspicious, uneasy eyes of a cornered animal. Then, without answering, she reached for her hat and was about to go silently on her way, when something in Marjorie's gracious words seemed to touch her and she said, grudgingly, "I remember you."

"That's nice," beamed Marjorie. "I was afraid you wouldn't. Let me tell you about my chum." She launched forth in an enthusiastic description of Mary Raymond and of their long friends.h.i.+p. "I wrote Mary about having seen a girl that looked like her. She will be very curious to see you.