The first two weeks of Virginia’s life at St. Helen’s passed without a cloud. The hours were as golden as the October days themselves. She and Priscilla liked each other better every day. She had already become acquainted with many of the girls at the other cottages, and she found them as jolly and merry as those at The Hermitage. She liked them—almost every one—and although at first her frank way of speaking, and the strangeness of her accent had puzzled and surprised them, they liked Virginia. Of course, all things accepted, they might have preferred being born in Massachusetts to Wyoming, for to many of them, as to Grandmother Webster, Wyoming seemed more or less of a wilderness, and a ranch rather a queer kind of home, but they had the good sense, and better manners, not to announce their preferences to Virginia; and as the days went by they liked her more and more. Wyoming might be a wilderness, they said to themselves; but this ranch-bred girl certainly was as cultured as any girl at St. Helen’s. So the letters which Virginia wrote almost daily to her father were very happy ones, and she almost began to doubt the possibility of being homesick in this beautiful place. Still, there were many weeks yet to come! Her studies, with Miss King’s help, had been pleasantly arranged; and, thanks to her book of compositions she had brought, her wide reading, and her year of Algebra in the country school, she found herself, to her great joy, ranked as a Sophomore, and in classes with Lucile and Vivian. She liked Vivian very much, and tried hard to like Imogene for Vivian’s sake. As for Lucile, she found her interesting in a queer foreign kind of way, for Lucile’s French father, and her years in Paris and Lausanne, had given her ways hardly American. Besides, Virginia agreed with Dorothy, she would like Lucile for Miss Wallace’s sake alone; for Virginia, as the prophets had foretold, already loved Miss Wallace with unswerving loyalty. Two more different persons than Miss Margaret Wallace and Miss Harriet Green would have been hard to find, especially housed beneath one roof, and presumably dedicated to the same ideals. Miss Wallace was young, enthusiastic, and attractive in appearance and personality; Miss Green was middle-aged, languid, and unattractive, certainly in appearance, and, as far as one could judge, in personality. Both were scrupulously conscientious, but Miss Wallace enforced the rules because she loved the girls, and Miss Green because it was her duty. Moreover, Margaret Wallace, remembering her own recent college days, trusted the girls before she suspected them; whereas Miss Green reversed the proceedings, and watched them closely before she decided to trust. The result of these different methods may be imagined. The girls obeyed Miss Wallace, because she never expected them to do otherwise. If they obeyed Miss Green, it was done unwillingly to save trouble.