kerchief was folded about her neck. She wore a little white cap
over her silver hair, and her eyes were so kind that Ruby was quite
sure that she should love her very, very much, and should never do
anything to displease her if she could help it.

Miss Chapman greeted Aunt Emma very warmly, and was introduced to Mrs.
Birkenbaum, and then she turned to the children.

"So these are the little girls I have been expecting," she said,
shaking hands with them.

She asked them a few questions about their journey, and whether they
had come together, and then she talked again with the ladies.

While this conversation was going on, the children looked about them,
Maude no less curiously than Ruby, for boarding-school was a new
experience to her, too.

It was a pleasant room. In one corner of it was a table with a globe
upon it, and some books, and in another corner was a what-not, with
shells and other curious things that Ruby wished she might go over and
examine.

She was wondering whether she might not whisper to Aunt Emma how eager
she was to go over to the what-not, and ask whether she might do so,
when Miss Chapman rose, and took the party up to their rooms. Ruby was
to room with her Aunt Emma, which was a very good arrangement for more
than one reason; for she would be less apt to be homesick with her
aunt, and besides that she would not be in danger of transgressing
rules by speaking to other pupils after the lights had been put out for
the night.

Maude was to room with one of the other girls, and her room was at the
end of the hall. It was a very comfortable little room with two little
white beds in it, but Maude did not seem very well satisfied with it.
The room in which Ruby was to sleep was larger, because it was a
teacher's room, and it did not please Maude to find that Ruby or indeed
any one else, should have anything that was better than what she
herself had. She looked very sullen, but she did not say anything
while Miss Chapman was upstairs.

After Miss Emma and Ruby had gone to their own room and she was left
alone with her mother in the room which she was to share, she threw
herself down upon one of the beds, exclaiming angrily,--

"I don't want to stay here, mamma. I just wish you would either make
them give me the nicest room in the house, or take me home with you.
Do you spose I want a mean little room like this when Ruby Harper has
such a nice one? The idea of a little country girl having