"Then her parents died and the house was Miss Hull's, but still there wasn't any money. All her friends wanted her to sell it, but she wouldn't do it. There had been six generations of Hulls on this place, and she wasn't going to let her ancestors up in heaven see her beaten by a little thing like no money."

"Oh, Glad!" Sally and Prue protested.

"Well, she wasn't," Gladys persisted. "Maybe that's not a very elegant way of putting it, but it's exactly as it was. She wouldn't admit she was beaten, and, of course, she wasn't.

"She got together with some teachers that she knew and she started Hilltop. She started with ten pupils, and now I wish you'd look at us.

We're the most wonderful school in the country."

Gladys finished as though she were closing a speech to the Senate.

"But what about the ballroom?" Janet insisted.

"I'm coming to that, if you have a little patience," Gladys told her.

"Miss Hull remembered her grandfather, and she remembered how he liked to have the rooms called by their special name, so she goes on calling them the same and so you see, instead of having lectures in an a.s.sembly hall, like everybody else, we have them in a real ballroom, that's the most beautiful room in the state.

"That's why we call it the ballroom still, and why we call the dining room the hall, why Miss Hull's room is the boudoir instead of an office, and why we have history in the library instead of a cla.s.sroom. You see, it gives us an advantage over other schools, makes Hilltop original instead of an ordinary boarding school."

Gladys paused, and looked at her listeners for appreciation.

The twins sighed. "It's just wonderful!" Janet said.

"Why it makes you think you're living in the time of white wigs and patches," Phyllis whispered, looking about her as though she expected to see Colonel Hull walk through one of the heavy oak doors, ready for a day with the hounds.

Janet's eyes held the look of dreamy speculation that had so often filled them when she was reading old-world stories in her Enchanted Kingdom.

Gladys had dropped her mocking tone as the story unfolded. The realest love in her life was Hilltop, and she loved to talk about it. She saw the look in the twins' eyes that she had hoped to see, and she smiled contentedly.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, step this way if you please," she went on with a return to her laughing manner. "We will now learn something of the present history of the school. We are now in the old building and, I might add, the only building to live in, but observe this green baize door. It leads to what is commonly called the new wing."

She pushed it open with a contemptuous push, and they found themselves in a spick-and-span corridor of white woodwork and gleaming mahogany doors. In comparison to the old and stately paneled walls of the old building it seemed new indeed.

Several girls that the twins recognized came out of one of the rooms and stopped in mock surprise.

"Why, Gladys! Why, Prue! Why, Sally!" Louise Brown, a tall and lanky girl, and one of their own cla.s.smates, exclaimed. "Is it possible that you've come for a breath of fresh air to our light and sunny abode, after the mouldy shadows of yours?" she asked, smiling sweetly.

Gladys sighed, but it was Sally who answered.

"No," she said in a bored tone, "we are simply showing Janet and Phyllis what to avoid in the future."

The other girls laughed good-naturedly.

"That's one on you, Sally," Louise admitted, and one of the other girls exclaimed:

"Long live the rivalry between the old and the new at Hilltop!"

"Well, anyway, now that you're here, come on into my room, I've got a whale of a box of candy," little Kitty Joyce invited.

When they were all seated in her dainty room, Phyllis said, shyly:

"I wish somebody would explain to me about this rivalry; I don't understand."

"I'll explain!" Louise jumped up and stood in the middle of the floor, her hands behind her back.

"We are two distinct and separate wings," she began, "and we represent the old and the new. For some reason that n.o.body will ever understand, a spirit of rivalry started between the two years ago, when we were very new. Now it is an established fact. We fight in games, in art and in lessons for the glory of our wings, and even at the risk of being rude,"

she added with a little twinkle in her eye, "I'm going to state last year our house won everything."

"Everything but archery, history, composition and dramatics," Prue reminded her gravely.

"Oh, pouf!" Kitty laughed. "Those don't count. We won the tennis cup, the running cup, the art prize, for sculpture and painting."

"That was last year," said Sally severely.

They munched the candy for a while in silence, and then Kitty said slowly:

"Funny thing the way the wings feel about each other. Why, look at you, Sally. You were awfully good friends with Alice Bard, and she was a new wing girl...."

"Well, for that matter, take us here today," Louise put in. "We're really the best of friends, and yet-"

"And yet there's a difference. It's rather like two brothers who go to different colleges. They love each other, but they love their colleges too."

"All very well," said Gladys, "but the truth of the matter is that both wings enjoy the spirit of compet.i.tion. It gives us something to think about and work for."

"But you're so good-natured about it," Janet said wonderingly.

"Of course we are," Sally replied. "Whoever heard of two basketball teams really disliking each other, and yet they'll fight tooth and nail for a cup."

"A cup that they really don't want, either, except for what it stands for," Gladys added with a little laugh.

Kitty threw up her two little hands in mock despair.

"Mercy on us. We are getting in deep. I vote we have some more chocolates."

The girls returned to the candy box with renewed interest and for the time being the subject of the wings was dropped, but not before the twins had grasped the exact nature of the rivalry.

CHAPTER V-A Fresh Freshman

"Something's got to be done about that little Ethel Rivers."

Sally sat down in the big tufted chair in the twins' room, and made the announcement with a positiveness that left no room for doubt.

"What's she been doing now?" Phyllis laughed.

"Why, Prue and I met her in the hall and she walked past us with her nose in the air. Prue stopped her and asked her where she was going, and what do you think she said?"