The dinner was nicely served and was much better than the food usually put on the table at Higbee School. By this time Nancy _was_ hungry, and she did full justice to the repast. Meanwhile an occasional brisk fire of conversation between Corinne and her friends penetrated to Nancy's rather confused understanding.

"Are all the nice boys back at Clinton Academy this half, do you know, Corinne?"

"Don't ask me! I can't keep run of _all_ Dr. Dudley's boys," laughed Miss Pevay.

"Well, I hope Bob Endress has come. He's certainly one nice boy," cried another of the seniors.

"Why! he's only a child!" drawled another young lady. "If he is back this fall it is only to begin his junior year."

"I don't care," said Corinne. "He really _is_ a nice boy. I agree with Mary."

"Say! the Montgomery girl told me Bob came near being drowned this summer. What do you know about that?"

"Oh, Carrie!"

"She had all the details, so I guess it's so. He is some sort of a distant relative of hers----"

"I'd want the relationship to be mighty distant if I were Bob," laughed the girl named Mary.

"Quite so," said the teller of the tale. "However, he went automobiling with the Montgomerys through to Chicago. And on the road he fell into some pond, or river, and he can't swim----"

"But he can skate--beautifully," sighed Corinne. "I hope there'll be good skating this winter on Clinton River."

"Me, too! And me! Oh, I adore skating!" were the chorused exclamations from the group.

Corinne now noted that Nancy had finished.

"Come! I've got to stow little 'greeny' away for the night," she said, pinching Nancy's plump cheek. "Come on, kid! It'll soon be bedtime for first-readers."

Nancy did not mind this playful reference to her juvenile state, it was said so pleasantly. She followed Corinne docilely up the broad flight into the west wing of the great building. Once it had been a private residence; but it was big enough to be called a castle.

The rooms on the lower floor had not been much changed when Pinewood Hall became a preparatory school for girls. But above the first story the old part.i.tions had been ripped out and the floors cut up on each side of the main stairways into a single broad, T-shaped corridor and many reasonably s.p.a.cious bedrooms and studies.

One walked out of the corridor into the studies; the bedrooms were back of these dens, with broad windows, overlooking the beautiful grounds.

On the first dormitory floor were the instructors' rooms, for the most part. One lady teacher only slept on the second floor; above, the seniors and juniors governed their own dormitories. By the time the girls came to their last two years at Pinewood Hall, Madame Schakael believed that they should be governed by honor solely.

The freshies were paired on the first dormitory floor--two girls in each apartment. Number 30, Nancy found, was upon one of the "arms" of the corridor, and a good way from any of the teachers' studies, and from the main stairway.

When Corinne and Nancy came to Number 30 there was n.o.body in the study or bedroom. The older girl snapped on the electric lights by pushing a b.u.t.ton in the wall beside the entrance door.

"Rathmore is your chum," said Corinne, lightly. "I hope you two girls will get on well together. I like to have all the chums live together without friction--for it is easier for me, and easier for the teachers.

"Now, Cora Rathmore has been here half a term already. Some of your cla.s.s came in last spring so as to take up certain studies to fit them for the beginning of the fall work. I presume, from what Madame Schakael says, that your school was a pretty good one, and that you were brought along farther in your primary and grammar studies than some of the others.

"However, Rathmore knows her way about. She--she's not a bad sort; but she and some of her friends last spring made the former West Side captain considerable trouble.

"So those girls who were bothersome," pursued Corinne, "can't room together again this half. There! that is your side of the room. That's your bed, and your cupboard and locker, and your dressing table. Keep everything neat, Nancy. That's the first commandment at Pinewood Hall.

And the other commandments you can read on that framed list," and she pointed to a brief schedule of rules and duties hanging on the wall of the study.

Then the senior put her arm around the new girl and gave her a resounding kiss upon her plump cheek.

"You're a nice little thing, I believe. Good-night!" she said, and ran out of the room.

But she left Nancy Nelson feeling almost as though she had deliberately deceived the senior. Would Corinne Pevay have been so friendly--and kissed her--if she had been aware that Nancy was just "Miss n.o.body from Nowhere?"

After a little, however, the new girl opened her handbag and took out her toilet articles and her, nightgown, robe, and slippers. She arranged the brushes, and other things on the dressing table, and hung her robe and gown in their proper place.

It was now nearly nine o'clock. She understood that, during term time, at least, the freshman cla.s.s were to be in bed at nine; and even the seniors must have their lights out at ten o'clock.

She read the list of rules through carefully. They did not seem hard, or arbitrary. Miss Prentice had been strict, indeed. To Nancy these "commandments" seemed easily kept.

There were two small desks in the room. Nancy examined the one upon her own side of the study and found only stationery, blank books, pencils, and pen and ink. There were no books.

But she ventured to look in the other desk, which was not locked, and saw that here were several text-books, evidently to be studied by the freshmen this first year.

In each book was written the name of Cora Rathmore. It was an erect, angular handwriting, and somehow Nancy drew from it that she would not like the owner of the books.

And yet she wanted to like her. Nancy longed for a real chum. She wished that her suspicions might prove to be unfounded, and that her roommate might be a jolly, open-hearted girl who would like her, and----

"Well! perhaps you don't know that that is _my_ desk?" snapped a voice suddenly, behind her.

Nancy dropped the book, startled. She wheeled to see confronting her, just within the room, the black-eyed, thin-faced girl who had seemed on the train to be Grace Montgomery's chief friend.

"Well! haven't you got anything to say?" demanded the sharp-voiced girl.

"Why, I wondered what our books were going to be like----"

"Now you know. Keep out of my desk hereafter," interposed the other girl. "And please to inform me what you're doing in here, anyway?"

"Why, I--I have been chummed with you--if you are Cora Rathmore," said Nancy.

"_You?_" shrieked the other. "No! it's not so! I won't have it! I was just going to get my books and go to Grace's room----"

"Oh, I know nothing about _that_," said Nancy, hastily. "I only know that Miss Pevay brought me to this room and said I must chum with the girl who was here."

"It's not so! I don't believe you!" cried Cora. "And that stuck-up thing,--that French-Canadian smartie!--just did it to be mean. I'm going to Madame----"

Nancy really hoped she would. She hoped with all her heart that it would prove a mistake that Cora Rathmore was chummed with her. She knew very well now that her suspicions had justification in fact. This girl was a most unpleasant roommate.

At that moment the door banged open and another girl came flying in.

"Oh, Cora! have you found out? We can't do it?"

"Found out what?" snapped Cora.

"We can't pick our rooms as we did last spring. Grace has been sent clear over into the other corridor, and is paired with a greeny----Say, who's _this_?"