CHAPTER VI
GETTING SETTLED
After the first busy and exciting weeks when everything was new and alittle terrifying, the girls settled down to regular work and, at timesto a rather dull life, so sometimes very small events loomed quite largeto their young eyes. Of course there were letters from home. And therewas no more thrilling moment in the day than that in which SallieDickinson appeared on the school platform, at the close of the twoo'clock session, with the old brown mail bag under her arm.
Sallie's blouses were old and faded and her skirt had seen better daysbut little Jane Pool declared that the post-girl always looked just likean angel when she stepped in through the doorway with that dingy bag.
And of course the girls wrote letters, large numbers of them, to thepersons on their writing lists. Some of them liked to write letters andwrote very fat ones. Some of them, like Mabel for instance, hated towrite letters and wrote very thin ones. One rainy afternoon, thefreckled girl, Cora Doyle, regaled her friends with a distressing tale.
"Do you know," said she, from her perch on Jean's window sill, "Ibelieve Dr. Rhodes _reads_ our letters before he sends them. Mine arealways late getting to my folks and I've seen heaps of letters stackedup in his office for days at a time. And one evening I went in to askfor a piece of courtplaster for Ruth Dennis's thumb and all those Rhodespeople were around a table doing something to a lot of mail."
"Perhaps," said Jean, who knew that Cora was apt to make mountains outof molehills, "they were just looking to see if they were stamped orproperly addressed. You know they have to bring them back to ussometimes for reasons like that."
"I don't know," returned Cora. "Things are queer and different thisyear. I'd like to, but I can't tell you why."
"_Do_ tell us," begged Henrietta.
"No, I can't. I promised not to."
"There's one thing," said Jean, "that surprises me. Doctor Rhodes isn'ta bit like a school teacher. And when he talks to us in the school roomas he sometimes does when he has anything to announce like new rules ora lecture or a concert in the village, he often uses the wrong word ormispronounces a word, as if--well, as if he weren't used to makingspeeches in very good English."
"I think he gets rattled," said little Jane Pool, sagely.
"Somehow," said Marjory, "I don't exactly like Doctor Rhodes. I don'texactly _believe_ in him."
"I don't quite like him, either," declared Henrietta, who had washed herwonderful mop of hair and was drying it with a large bathtowel. "I'msurprised at my Grandmother for saying such nice things about him. Whenthere are visitors he seems so oily and so smooth; and it seems to methat he is extra polite to those Miller girls--all the world uses theirfather's soap, you know--but when he asks Sallie to do errands he doesn'teven say please. And Mrs. Rhodes is always gliding about like the ghostof Hamlet's Father. She looks as if she were listening with all herfeatures. But she never _says_ a thing to us, even when she catches usslipping around through the corridors after lights are out."
"I'm glad she doesn't," said Marjory. "She _looks_ all the things shedoesn't say."
"After all," said Jean, sagely, "they might be a lot worse."
The next day was Sunday and Sundays were quite different from all theother days. In the morning the girls always marched two by two to churcha long mile away, where they sat in the front pews with their eyes fixedupon the clergyman. This often proved a trying ordeal for that gentlemanbecause this particular church had no regular rector. Instead, eachSunday, a student from the Theological Seminary just north of thevillage offered up home made prayers and stammered forth his firstsermon before the long suffering members of that little church. Eachsuccessive student, it seemed, was more bashful than the last; and ifany one of those blushing young preachers had ever learned to deliver asermon, he promptly forgot all he knew, when, for the first time, hefaced a congregation. There was one thing, however, that all thesestuttering young men _could_ do and that was to perspire copiously andcontinuously. No matter how many impressive gestures the preacher mighthave practised at home beforehand, he used only one while he occupiedthat pulpit. With handkerchief clutched firmly in his shaking righthand, he mopped and mopped and mopped his dripping brow.
While the girls couldn't help being amused, they were always sorry forthe tortured youths.
"You wouldn't think," said Cora, after one of these painful ordeals,"that they'd be afraid to face thirty or forty girls but they alwaysare. Just as soon as their eyes light on those ten pews full of HighlandHall girls, their carefully prepared words take flight, and I guess_they'd_ like to, too."
"They seem to find it almost as hard to pass the plate," laughedHenrietta. "When they get to us their knees begin to wobble."
"It's because we stare at those poor creatures so unmercifully," saidJean. "Even a real minister would be embarrassed, I should think."
"I'm sorry for them, too," said Bettie, "but they _are_ funny. Of coursethey have to learn to preach if they're going to be ministers, but itseems cruel to make them do it that way."
"Just like dumping puppies into cold water to teach them to swim," saidMarjory.
"It isn't very much like our kind of church," complained Bettie. "It'stoo entertaining. We're Episcopalians and _our_ ministers don't _have_to learn how to make their own prayers--the folks that make them knowhow."
"Yes," said Jean, "we're all getting lonesome for our own kind ofservices. That's one thing we miss."
"Well, then," said Sallie Dickinson, "I have some good news for you. Inabout four weeks more the new Episcopal Church will be ready for use andyou can go there. Miss Woodruff and Mrs. Henry Rhodes are Episcopalians,so perhaps we'll _all_ go. We used to go to the old church before it wastorn down."
"I think," said Henrietta, demurely, "we ought to come back to thischurch once in a while just to keep those poor Theologs perspiring. MissWoodruff says perspiring is necessary to good health."
The Sunday dinners were apt to be rather good; there was usuallychicken.
"But," complained Mabel, after one of these chicken dinners, "I don'tsee why I have to get all the lizzers and gizzers."
"What!" gasped Maude.
"Givers and lizzers; no, gizzers and lizards," sputtered Mabel. "I_always_ get them."
"She means livers and gizzards," explained Jean.
Sunday afternoons dragged. The girls could walk within bounds but thatwas not particularly exciting. On week days they usually gathered nutsin the grove--if one threw enough sticks it was possible to knock down ahickory nut or two most any day; or explored an ancient garden in whichthere were old apple trees. But in Sunday frocks and Sunday shoes it waswiser to stick to the sidewalks, so the girls strolled about andgossiped. It was truly surprising how much they found to talk about.
Sometimes on rainy Sunday afternoons, Henrietta gathered a flock of theyounger girls about her on the wide front staircase, a dim, spooky,black walnutty place with a vast dark space overhead, and told thrillingtales. That was one thing that Henrietta could do to perfection.
But Sunday evenings at Highland Hall were almost invariably harrowing.The girls gathered about the piano in the big, chilly drawing room andsang familiar hymns and wept.
Sallie Dickinson wept because she hadn't any home. The rest of them weptbecause they had. Still, Sunday after Sunday evening they sang the samesorrowful hymns because it seemed the proper thing to do, and thenretired sniffling and snuffling to their narrow, single beds.
"They _like_ it," declared Mrs. Henry Rhodes. "Boarding school girlsalways do it, and they wouldn't do it if they didn't enjoy it."
There was one Sunday evening, however, when the gloom was somewhatlightened; and when giggles supplanted sobs. Stout Miss Woodruff, cladin her smooth gray serge gown, with its white vest for Sunday use only,usually sat in a large arm-chair at the end of the room, in order tolend dignity to the meeting. But on this occasion she was absent and hadasked Abbie to take her place. Poor scatter-brained Abbie had forgottenall about it so the chair was vacant.
But not for long.
The chief ornament of the high mantel shelf was a large stuffed bird--apenguin. When it became evident to the waiting girls that no one wascoming to occupy that vacant chair, Maude Wilder, always resourceful,climbed upon a chair, seized the stately penguin and placed him in thechair. With his dignity, his mildly disapproving eye and his smooth grayand white plumage, his resemblance to stern Miss Woodruff--vest andall--was so striking and so amusing that the astonished girls burst forthwith a chorus of giggles instead of words when Mrs. Henry Rhodes, at thepiano, played the opening notes of the first hymn.
Of course Mrs. Henry turned around to see what caused this most unusualhilarity. When she saw the solemn penguin doing his birdlike best to behuman and succeeding so admirably in filling Miss Woodruff's place, Mrs.Henry not only giggled but laughed outright; and all the pupils,including the lofty Seniors, joined in. For the rest of the evening,even the saddest hymns failed to bring on a single case of homesickness.
"But," warned Mrs. Henry, restoring the bird to his lofty perch when thesinging was finished, "we must never do this again. We've all been verybad."
"I love that lady," said Maude, on the way upstairs. "If _she_ were myteacher I'd be good all the time."
"I hope," giggled Sallie Dickinson, "I won't forget and call MissWoodruff 'Miss Penguin.' I shall never be able to dust that bird againwithout thinking of her."