South America? India? Was India south? No, it couldn't be, because she had heard Audrey Green of East House describing a perfectly sweet Hindu costume which her roommate was going to wear. Southerner? How stupid of her! Why not a Virginian lady of the Colonial period? Why not? That's settled. Now as to the how; whom could she ask? But no sympathetic friend presented herself and Judith again began to feel aggrieved.

"Hurrah! hurrah!" cried Josephine excitedly rushing into the room.

"Jim--my brother--arrives to-night from Alberta and he'll call here to-morrow first thing. I believe," she added in a lower, confidential tone, "I believe I must have been a bit homesick and didn't know it--there'll be letters and messages, and probably a box, too, from home. Oh, I can hardly wait till to-morrow! Jim says Mother is all right, though she misses me dreadfully--you see our nearest neighbour lives fifty miles away, and sometimes she doesn't see a white woman all winter."

"Fifty miles!" repeated Judith in amazement.

"Yes, we have to have a lot of land for the horses, and sometimes Dad is away for several days visiting the outlying parts and Mother gets pretty lonely."

"You're joking, Jo--your father couldn't spend several days travelling on his own farm."

"Not farm, Judibus," said Josephine, laughing, "it's a ranch, and it has to be big, as I said, for the horses."

"How big?" demanded Judith, still thinking of the farms she had seen in Ontario and Quebec.

"We had twenty-five thousand acres last year, but Dad has leased another ten thousand on the other side of the river. Oh, Judy, my dear, if ever you come to the West I'll show you what real fun is! Sometimes I ride all day--and such riding! I've a gem of a little mare--Patsy's her name--she's as good a chum as I ever had until I came here last year.

Aren't mothers bricks?" she added with a little catch in her voice.

"Mother really needs me, but she just insisted on my coming--she taught me in her spare time until I came here last year, and because spare time wasn't plentiful there are big gaps in what I know, and as I'm stupid to begin with, the lessons sometimes seem so hard that I just want to give up and run home. But of course I'm not going to," she finished, laughing at Judith's sober face; "that _would_ be a poor way to say 'thank you'

to my blessed little mother. What are you going to be to-night?"

"A Colonial lady from Virginia," answered Judith superbly.

"Good--isn't that funny? I'm going to be be a Virginian Colonel. Let's be partners. Molly was to be mine, but she certainly can't go with a sprained ankle. We'd better get busy--there isn't much time left." And Josephine disappeared into her own cubicle where Judith could hear her opening and closing drawers and singing in her funny boyish voice their new nonsense song:

"Of all the ships that sail on land, There's none like 'Jolly Susan.'

Her crew works well with heart and hand, And sometimes they're amusin'."

Sally May and Jane whirled into the "Jolly Susan" like small hurricanes in time to sing the verse over again, and then the s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk she could hear told Judith that her neighbours were thoroughly enjoying the fascinating business of dressing up, and had evidently forgotten all about her.

Perhaps it was a little reaction after several weeks of new and exciting experiences; perhaps Josephine's reference to mothers being "bricks"; whatever it was Judith felt lonely and homesick. She didn't know how to make her costume; she didn't think of Sally May, and she hated to confess to Josephine--to whom, it must be confessed, she had always felt a little superior--that she hadn't a ghost of a notion how to make, out of nothing at all, the dress of a Virginian lady of fashion.

But although Josephine had convulsed the cla.s.s and enraged Madame Phillippe by translating _hors de combat_ as "war-horse," and although her ideas as to angles and triangles were so hazy as to be of no service to her in a geometry cla.s.s, she was not at all stupid where her fellow humans were concerned, and she had seen the quickly restrained quiver on Judith's lips when mothers were mentioned.

"I guess she's homesick and doesn't know it," said Josephine to herself.

"I'd better buck her up a bit and give her a good time." But because she had a generous admiration of Judith's cleverness she never thought of offering her any suggestions as to how to put her costume together.

A little later she appeared in Judith's doorway in black tights, blue silk stockings, buckled shoes (cardboard buckles covered with silver paper), a white shirt blouse b.u.t.toned high, and a long black ribbon in her hand.

"Please wind it round my neck, Judy, several times as high up as you can. Why, where is your dress?" she asked in surprise.

Poor, proud Judith, how she hated to confess that she simply could not think of anything. But the despised Josephine rose to the occasion: she took charge with an a.s.surance which immediately dispelled Judith's gloom.

"Colonial lady--um--you will look awfully nice with your hair powdered--let me see--your chintz curtains will do for panniers--put on your frilliest blouse and a white skirt, pull down your curtains, and I'll drape you in a minute or two."

Josephine was as good as her word. Blouse and skirt by means of an overdrape of window curtain were made into the dress of a lady of quality; Judith's pretty hair was piled high and liberally powdered with talc.u.m, and Josephine even produced a tiny bit of rouge and a black patch, and insisted that to make the picture complete Judith must have the buckled shoes, and as there wasn't time to make more buckles she'd wear her old pumps.

Josephine was having such a good time admiring the result of her handiwork that Judith accepted the shoes with a good grace, and off they went to join the throng in the Big Hall. So successful had Josephine been that Judith had quite a little triumph as she entered the hall on her colonel's arm, for she had discarded the spectacles she wore during school hours, and the powder and rouge had discovered a hitherto unnoticed pair of beautiful arching eyebrows, and altogether her appearance was so distinguished that numbers of girls turned to ask, "Who's that pretty Virginian with Jo?"

It _was_ a thrilling evening. Indeed, it is to be doubted whether bona-fide b.a.l.l.s of later years would ever bring such thrills and such intoxicating happiness to the Pierrots and Pierrettes, gypsies and Arabs, Spanish dancers and flower girls, Elizabethan ladies and cavaliers, Red Cross nurses and college dons, Indian chiefs and squaws, cowboys and "habitant" girls, who were so thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Judith laughed and danced away her blues, and to all the compliments paid her was glad to be able to say with honest admiration, "Oh, _I_ couldn't do it--Josephine did--isn't she just _wonderful_?"

And when, after "the loveliest party ever," Judith tucked up in bed and her thoughts ran to the absent mother, instead of tears she smiled happily and whispered, "What a _lot_ of nice people there are in the world, mummy, dear--I've got an awful lot to learn--but I'm going to try _hard_ to be unselfish and kind like Josephine and Nancy."

CHAPTER IV

A SUPPER PARTY

"OH, goody!" Judith heard Nancy saying, "isn't it splendid that it came on Friday! We never have anything but buns and milk after a Friday night lecture. Your mother is an _angel_, Sally May; she must have guessed that this was going to be a Friday without a party."

"That you, Judy?" came in Sally May's pretty voice; "come on in." And Judith was soon seated on Sally May's couch.

The crew of the "Jolly Susan" were invited, she learned, to partake of an elegant cold collation consisting of roast chicken, meringues, cakes, candies, etc., etc., which Sally May's mother was thoughtfully sending them from a caterer in town.

"Have you asked Miss Marlowe if we may have the small sitting-room?"

asked Nancy after Judith had been informed of the feast awaiting her.

"Asked--Miss Marlowe?" gasped Sally May; "well, of all the queer schools! Ask a teacher if we may have a midnight supper? Well, I reckon _not_!"

"Why, that's the way we do," returned Nancy; "the lecture will be over early and then we'll go up to the sitting-room and have our feed."

"Oh, that," said Sally May, "is ridiculous and no fun at all. Why, at Knowlton Manor we always waited until twelve o'clock, at least, and had our feasts in the loveliest places. Once we had supper in the cellar, and the engineer caught us and we had a terrible time bribing him; and last June, at Miss Gray's school, five of us were caught in the teachers' own sitting-room at three A.M."

Her hearers looked horrified enough to satisfy even Sally May, who loved to tell a story, and she related one epic after another, until the York audience were convinced that life would not be worth living unless they too could recount similar tales when they went home for the Christmas vacation.

Miss Marlowe and her rules were forgotten, and they laid their plans for a midnight supper.

"But Miss Marlowe knows that your box has arrived," objected practical Nancy.

"Then we'll buy some buns at tuck and have a _camouflage_ supper after the lecture, and the real one at midnight," retorted Sally May, not to be done out of her scheme.

"I wish we could ask Cathy, don't you?" said Josephine; "she's been such a dear that it seems a shame to have a glorification without her."

Catherine, hard at work at her desk in her own room, caught the sound of her name, and the next sentence in an excited voice revealed the fact that a midnight supper was being planned for that very night. Her first impulse, of course, was to tell the crew that she had unwittingly overheard them, and use her influence as captain and prefect to stop the whole proceeding; and then, because she was taking her duties as a prefect very seriously, she stopped to consider the little escapade in a new light.

Sally May, Catherine could see, was going to be troublesome. Already she had chafed at several time-honoured rules and customs, for her sense of reverence for traditions had been stifled by her ceaseless change of residence, and Sally May was becoming exceedingly popular. Her soft Southern voice, with its delicious inflections and its lazy drawl, was most persuasive. The crew of the "Jolly Susan" had so far been a model crew and Catherine had not yet had to enforce discipline, but at the last prefects' meeting Sally May had been mentioned as the cause of two practical jokes perpetrated in other parts of the house, and, "Such things are not done, they are simply not done," said the School captain severely; "Catherine, you must take Sally May in hand." Perhaps this was her chance. She waited until the four o'clock bell scattered the conspirators to practising and gymnasium cla.s.ses and then went down to the captain's study.

"Come in," said a clear ringing voice as Catherine knocked at Eleanor's door; "you're just in time for tea--here, you toast the crumpets and I'll brew the tea."

"Wait a jiffy and I'll get some jam--wild strawberry with crumpets is heavenly."

Catherine was back in the specified jiffy, and in a few moments the two friends were chatting comfortably over their tea-cups.

York Hill like most modern schools had adopted a modified form of self-government. Each of the four Houses had its quota of prefects appointed by the staff, and a House captain; the Senior House captain was known as the Captain of the School, and this year South House had the honour of providing the School Captain--Eleanor Ormsby. The prefects, usually members of the various Sixth Forms, were girls who had shown themselves worthy of responsibility and privilege and who could be trusted to set the tone of the School.

Eleanor Ormsby was deservedly popular: there was a frankness and a directness about her almost boyishly clear-cut face which inspired confidence, and the girls who brought their difficulties to her found in her a wise and sympathetic counsellor. Eleanor was not beautiful like Catherine, not brilliant like Patricia--in fact it was with difficulty that she held her place in the Sixth-Form cla.s.ses, but on basket-ball court, hockey-rink, or gymnasium floor she had no rival. Above all she was a born leader, and having spent all her school days at York was steeped in its traditions and ideals.