"Madame," replied Emma Jane, "the window was open--we were listening to the music--and a bat flew in; and, Madame, he would not stay in the waste-paper basket, and so, Madame, I threw him out."
Every one laughed; discipline was forgotten for the moment, until Madame rapped smartly on the desk and called for order. She complimented Emma Jane highly on her conscientiousness, but she looked provoked with her all the same, while Witch Winnie, who was stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, nearly went into convulsions.
After the sketch which I have endeavored to give of Witch Winnie, and the position which she occupied at Madame's, I trust that we, as self-respecting pupils, will not be too severely blamed when I confess that we received, with great disfavor, Madame's announcement that Winnie was henceforth to room in the Amen Corner.
The bedrooms at Madame's boarding-school were clustered in little groups around study-parlors, five girls forming a family. For a long time there had been only four in our set. Emma Jane Anton, who preferred to room alone, had the little single bedroom; Adelaide and Milly were chums; while I, Nellie Smith, familiarly nicknamed Tib, had luxuriated so long in the large corner chamber that I had almost forgotten that Madame told me, at the outset, that I must hold myself in readiness to receive a room-mate at any time.
Adelaide Armstrong was the daughter of a railroad magnate. She had been brought up in the West, but, though she had traveled much, and had seen a great deal of society, her education had not been entirely neglected. She had studied a great deal in a desultory way, and contested the head of the class with Emma Jane Anton, who was a "regular dig," and had prepared for college in the Boston public schools.
It was really surprising how Adelaide had picked up so much. She had studied Latin with a priest in New Mexico, and had profited by two years at a lonely post on the confines of Canada, where her father had been interested in the fur trade, to become proficient in French. Strikingly handsome, a brunette with brilliant complexion and Andalusian eyes, energetic and spirited, she was popular both with her instructors and her classmates.