Virginia had not the vaguest idea of what a shark might be. Most apparently, not a fish; but she saw that Dorothy’s remark embarrassed both Mary and Anne. She liked Anne at once. She was rather short and plump, with a sweet face and soft Southern accent. “She comes from Virginia,” Priscilla said in a whisper to her new room-mate, as they drove along. Virginia divided her attention between her great interest in the country and her absorbing eagerness to hear all that the girls had to say, for Mary and Anne were kept busy answering Priscilla’s and Dorothy’s questions. Yes, Imogene Meredith had returned, and she and Vivian Winters were rooming together as they did last year. Miss Green was to be in The Hermitage—(a long sigh from Priscilla and Dorothy)—but the adorable Miss Wallace was to be there likewise. The fortunate girl, who was to be blessed with Dorothy’s Navajo rug, and, incidentally, with Dorothy herself, was new, and a protégée of Miss Wallace’s. (Sighs of envy from all.) Her name was Lucile Du Bose, and Miss Wallace had become acquainted with her in France through mutual friends. She was doubtless very nice, but a little shy and apparently lonely, and Miss Wallace had asked as a special favor to herself that the girls try to make her feel at home. Moreover, Miss Wallace had proposed Dorothy as a room-mate. “That settles it,” announced Dorothy. “I shall be angelic to Lucile, even if she’s positively hopeless; since I’m doing Miss Wallace a favor!” “Who has the big up-stairs room?” asked Priscilla. Mary and Anne laughed. “Somebody very important,” said Anne in her pretty Southern accent. “She hasn’t come herself, but she has trunks and bags enough for the whole family, and they keep on coming. Up to this noon there were three trunks, two bags, a shawl strap, and four express packages. And the trunks and bags are all marked ‘K. Van R.— New York’ in big letters. Mary and I were so wild with curiosity that we had the impoliteness to turn over one of the express packages to see the name on it, and ’twas ‘Miss Katrina Van Rensaelar.’ We asked Miss Green about her, but gleaned no information except that she would be here in a few days, and was to room alone, as her guardian had especially requested it.” “Dear me! How select!” observed Dorothy. “She ought to be Katrina Van Tassel, like Katrina in ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,’” said Virginia, whereupon every one laughed, and Mary said that “Sleepy Hollow” would be a very appropriate name for the room, as the girls who had it last year never heard the rising bell, and were invariably late for breakfast. “We’re getting very near now, Virginia,” said her new room-mate. And, a moment later, they drove through some stone gate-posts and up a lovely curving road bordered by pines, which edged the woodland on either side. “There are always hepaticas here in the spring the first of any place,” they told her.