nrelieved.
"If this isn't fun! I'm sorry for poor Esther at Miss Graham's,"
said Bobby, looking about her with delight. "Mercy, what do you
suppose this is?"
One of the young clerks from the office approached the table, a large
cardboard sheet in her hand.
"I'm filling in the diagram," she explained. "You mustn't change your
seats without permission. Tell me your names, and I'll put you down in
the right spaces."
Betty looked over her shoulder as she wrote down their names. Like the
diagram of the seating space of a theatre, the tables and chairs were
plainly marked. Betty swiftly calculated that between one hundred and
twenty-five and one hundred and fifty girls must be seated in the room.
Later she learned that the total enrollment was one hundred and sixty.
Just outside the dining room was a large bulletin board, impossible to
ignore or overlook. When they came out from luncheon a notice was posted
that Mrs. Eustice would address the school at two o'clock in the assembly
hall in the main building. It was now one-thirty.
"Let's go look at the gym," suggested Bobby. "We have time. Oh, how do
you do?"--this last was apparently jerked out of her.
"I didn't know you were coming to Shadyside, Bobby," said Ruth Gladys
Royal effusively. "Do you know my chum, Ada Nansen? She's from San
Francisco."
"Constance Howard is from the West, too--the Presidio," said Bobby.
Gracefully she introduced the others to Ada and Ruth who surveyed them
indifferently. The Littell girls they knew were wealthy and had a place
in Washington society, but the rest were not yet classified.
"Haven't I seen you before?" Ada languidly questioned Betty. "You're not
the little waitress--Oh, how stupid of me! I was thinking of a girl who
looked enough like you to be your sister."
Bobby bristled indignantly, but Betty struggled with laughter.
"I remember you," she said clearly. "You had the wrong seat on the train
from Oklahoma."
Ada Nansen glanced at her with positive dislike.
"I don't recall," she said icily. "However, I've traveled so much I
daresay many incidents slip my mind. Well, Gladys, let's go in and get
good seats. I want to hear Mrs. Eustice; they say she is a direct
descendant of Richard Carvel."
"We might as well go in, too," said Bobby disconsolately. "She's used up
so much time we couldn't do the gym justice."
Promptly at two o'clock, white-haired Mrs. Eustice mounted the platform
and tapped a little bell f
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