Boarding school students -- Juvenile fiction; Boarding schools -- Juvenile fiction; Teenage girls -- Fiction
“Indeed we will,” replied Lilian and the others variously expressed
their friendly intentions. Number 51 was a three-room suite, two single
beds in each bedroom, the common sitting room large and sunny, with an
attractive window seat, which would doubtless be fitted up with cushions
when the girls finally decided to straighten up their belongings. As
Cathalina left the girls for her own quarters, a young cyclone in short
dress and with new shoes that squeaked, bumped past, almost upsetting
Cathalina, and with a careless “beg pardon”, flew past, breaking in a
door a little further down the hall and shutting it with a bang.
Cathalina stood looking after her with a shocked expression, and Hilary,
who just then appeared in the door of 52, laughed and remarked, “Another
of our neighbors, I suppose!”
Hilary’s cedar chest, which had been carefully wrapped and crated, stood
in all its glory inside the room, and the old janitor, as he appeared to
be, seeming to be in charge of the trunk brigade, was unstrapping a
trunk outside.
“O, thank you!” cried Hilary, as the perspiring janitor unlocked the
trunk with the key she handed him.
“No tips,” whispered Cathalina aside; “Miss Randolph said she does not
allow it.”
Hilary, who had not traveled, except from one of her father’s
appointments to another, hardly knew what tipping was, and would never
have thought of it, looked wise and said nothing.
A busy hour or two followed. Cathalina told Hilary how nicely her plan
worked, so Hilary did likewise, transferring her belongings, rather
slowly, it is true, from trunk to closet, bureau drawers and cedar chest
without the confusion of the neighboring room. Only light articles had
been packed in the cedar chest for the trip.
“It takes longer at first,” remarked Hilary, “but it seems to be the
better way. I hope you will not mind, Cathalina, but I’m really not very
neat. You see, there was always so much to do at home that I neglected
my room sometimes for other things and June so often picked up for both
of us.”
“I’m not neat, either,” said Cathalina, “because Etta,—well, I just
don’t know how very well.”
“We’ll have to criticise and train each other, then. You come to the
bedroom door and say, ‘My dear Hilary, do you intend to leave those
things on that chair?’ and I will say politely, ‘O, no, indeed,
Cathalina, pray come in and sit down!’” Hilary illustrated her supposed
hospitality by lifting from a chair the armful of clothing which she had
just sorted. “I heard Diane say that Miss Randolph is very particular
about how the girls keep their rooms.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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