Part 3 (1/2)
”You are going to Briarwood Hall, then, my young ladies?” said Miss Picolet.
”Yes, Ma'am,” said Ruth, shyly.
”I shall be your teacher in the French language--perhaps in deportment and the graces of life,” the little lady said, pleasantly. ”You will both enter into advanced cla.s.ses, I hope?”
Helen, after all, was more shy than Ruth with strangers. When she became acquainted she gained confidence rapidly. But now Ruth answered again for both:
”I was ready to enter the Cheslow High School; Helen is as far advanced as I am in all studies, Miss Picolet.”
”Good!” returned the teacher. ”We shall get on famously with such bright girls,” and she nodded several times.
But she was not really companionable. She never raised her veil. And she only talked with the girls by fits and starts. There were long s.p.a.ces of time when she sat huddled in the corner of her seat, with her face turned from them, and never said a word.
But the nearer the rumbling old stagecoach approached the promised land of Briarwood Hall the more excited Ruth and Helen became. They gazed out of the open windows of the coach doors and thought the country through which they traveled ever so pretty. Occasionally old Dolliver would lean out from his seat, twist himself around in a most impossible att.i.tude so as to see into the coach, and bawl out to the two girls some announcement of the historical or other interest of the localities they pa.s.sed.
Suddenly, as they surmounted a long ridge and came out upon the more open summit, they espied a bridle path making down the slope, through an open grove and across uncultivated fields beyond--a vast blueberry pasture. Up this path a girl was coming. She swung her hat by its strings in her hand and commenced to run up the hill when she spied the coach.
She was a thin, wiry, long-limbed girl. She swung her hat excitedly and although the girls in the coach could not hear her, they knew that she shouted to Old Dolliver. He pulled up, braking the lumbering wheels grumblingly. The newcomer's sharp, freckled face grew plainer to the interested gaze of Ruth and Helen as she came out of the shadow of the trees into the sunlight of the dusty highway.
”Got any Infants, Dolliver?” the girl asked, breathlessly.
”Two on 'em, Miss c.o.x,” replied the stage driver.
”Then I'm in time. Of course, n.o.body's met 'em?”
”Hist! Ma'mzell's in there,” whispered Dolliver, hoa.r.s.ely.
”Oh! She!” exclaimed Miss c.o.x, with plain scorn of the French teacher.
”That's all right, Dolliver. I'll get in. Ten cents, mind you, from here to Briarwood. That's enough.”
”All right, Miss c.o.x. Ye allus was a sharp one,” chuckled Dolliver, as the sharp-faced girl jerked open the nearest door of the coach and stared in, blinking, out of the sunlight.
CHAPTER IV
THE RIVALRY OF THE UPEDES AND THE FUSSY CURLS
The pa.s.sengers in the Seven Oaks and Lumberton stage sat facing one another on the two broad seats. Mademoiselle Picolet had established herself in one corner of the forward seat, riding with her back to the driver. Ruth and Helen were side by side upon the other seat, and this newcomer slid quickly in beside them and smiled a very broad and friendly smile at the two chums.
”When you've been a little while at Briarwood Hall,” she said, in her quick, pert way, ”you'll learn that that's the only way to do with Old Dolliver. Make your bargain before you get into the Ark--that's what we call this stage--or he surely will overcharge you. Oh! how-do, Miss Picolet!”
She spoke to the French teacher so carelessly--indeed, in so scornful a tone--that Ruth was startled. Miss Picolet bowed gravely and said something in return in her own language which made Miss c.o.x flush, and her eyes sparkle. It was doubtless of an admonis.h.i.+ng nature, but Ruth and Helen did not understand it.
”Of course, you are the two girls whom we ex--that is, who were expected to-day?” the girl asked the chums, quickly.
”We are going to Briarwood Hall,” said Ruth, timidly.
”Well, I'm glad I happened to be out walking and overtook the stage,”
their new acquaintance said, with apparent frankness and cordiality.
”I'm Mary c.o.x. I'm a Junior. The school is divided into Primary, Junior and Senior. Of course, there are many younger girls than either of you at Briarwood, but all newcomers are called Infants. Probably, however, you two will soon be in the Junior grade, if you do not at once enter it.”