“Back at last,” she greeted in her lively tones. “What cheer? Was it dinner at Baretti’s or tea at Miss Hamilton’s?”
“Miss Susanna had a late tea on purpose for us,” Marjorie replied. “Life has been one glorious succession of eats today since I got off the train at Hamilton station.” This with an accompanying sigh of utter well-being.
“Don’t forget the spread,” the little manager reminded. “It’s ready.”
“So are we,” declared Katherine brightly, “or we shall be when Vera and Robin come from the garage.”
“No true Hamiltonite could resist a ten o’clock spread even if she had been lunched, toasted and tea’d,” Marjorie cheerily asserted.
“No one could resist Ellen’s cream cake, either. I know that,” supplemented Kathie.
Vera and Robin presently returned and the quintette accompanied Miss Remson into the dining room where the “ten o’clock spread” awaited them. There was not only Ellen’s delicious cream cake but dainty sandwiches and fruit salad as well. Though none of them were actually hungry, a spread was a spread on any occasion and therefore not to be passed by.
As they sat about one of the smaller tables, enjoying the little good-night feast, Miss Remson said with a kind of hesitating abruptness: “Girls, I have broken my rule of rules for the first time since I undertook the management of Wayland Hall. I have accepted a freshman far in advance of the regular opening of the Hall.”
Interest flashed strongly into five pairs of eyes fixed on Miss Remson. The grim set of the little woman’s jaw indicated her evident displeasure with herself at the departure from her few iron-clad rules. With the half chagrined admission came to each girl simultaneously a remembrance of the stranger they had seen in the late afternoon when leaving the Hall for Hamilton Arms.
“Do you mean the girl who came here this afternoon in a taxi as we were starting for the Arms?” Vera lifted the silence that had ensued after the manager’s remarks.
“She is the one I mean.” Miss Remson nodded slowly and without enthusiasm.
“The fairy-tale princess!” Marjorie exclaimed involuntarily, then laughed.
“She had that look, I grant you,” Leila agreed. “Only it’s from Paris she comes, and not out of a fairy tale.”
“Correct, Leila. She arrived at New York City yesterday on a French steamer, and came straight from New York to Hamilton. Early last spring her father wrote me, applying for admission for her at the Hall to begin with the week before the opening of college and during her college year, provided she should pass her entrance examinations. Instead of abiding by the agreement which I made with him her father has sent her to the Hall several weeks too soon. There is nothing to be done in the matter save to allow her to remain. She tells me that her father sailed for Africa several days before she sailed for the United States. He joined an exploring expedition up the Amazon River.” Miss Remson’s face registered her disapproval in the matter.