Concerning Belinda Part 21

Amelia blushed.

"Oh, no; I was just changing the carriages a little. I had a heavenly time last night, Miss Carewe."

"Pretty party, was it?"

"Perfectly lovely. Do you know many Columbia men, Miss Carewe?"

"A few."

"Don't you think they're splendid?"

"Well, some of them are pleasant enough."

"I simply adore Columbia men. Their colors are lovely, aren't they?"

"Rather wishy-washy."

"Oh, Miss Carewe, I don't see how you can think that. I think light blue and white are perfectly sweet together--not a bit crude and loud like orange and black or red and black or that ugly bright blue."

Belinda wakened to suspicion.

"Why, Amelia, I thought George Pettingill was a Yale man."

Amelia examined carefully a picture on the other side of the room.

"Well, he is, but only a Freshman, and I don't think bright blue's a nice color. The Yale men are sort of like the color too. Don't you think they're a little bit loud and conceited, Miss Carewe?"

This was rank heresy. Belinda smiled and waited.

"There was a Columbia man at Daisy's party--a Soph.o.m.ore. He's the most elegant dancer. His name's Lawrence--Charlie Lawrence. He says my step just suits his. We had five two-steps and three waltzes."

For a few moments Amelia lapsed into reminiscent silence, but silence is not her _metier_.

"He has three brothers, but no sister at all, and he says a fellow needs a girl's influence to keep him straight. There's such a lot of wickedness in college life, and by the time you're a Soph.o.m.ore, you know the world mighty well."

There was the glibness of quotation about the recital, and Belinda indulged in a little smiling reminiscence on her own account. She, too, in earlier days, had been in Arcady--with desperately wicked and blase Soph.o.m.ores who needed a nice girl's gentle influence. Verily, the old methods wear well.

"He's coming to see me next reception night, if I can get permission from Mamma before then," said Amelia.

"Miss Carewe!" called a voice in the hall. Belinda turned to go.

"But what was wrong with the carriages?" she asked.

Amelia bent her fair head over the will until her face was hidden, but the tips of her ears reddened.

"Oh, I was just thinking that it didn't seem very respectful to Mamma and Papa to put George in the first carriage with them when they haven't known anything about him, so I thought I'd move him back a little way."

"Oh!" commented Belinda, with comprehension in her voice.

A quarrel between Amelia and Laura May, the Only True One, necessitated much remodelling of the unstable will during the next week, but the trouble was finally smoothed over and the pearl ring clause reinstated, though the chatelaine and La Valliere were lost to Laura May forever.

Friday evening was reception evening, and on Sat.u.r.day morning Amelia flew to the Primary room immediately after breakfast.

She lifted a beaming face when Belinda looked in upon her.

"Do you believe in love at first sight, Miss Carewe?" she asked.

"No."

"Oh, don't you? Why, I _know_ it's possible."

Belinda didn't argue the question.

"I'm writing out a whole new will. The other was all mussy and scratched up from being changed so often. Doesn't that look neat?"

She held up a sheet of paper which bore, in systematic grouping, a plan for filling the funeral carriages. Belinda glanced at it.

"Why, where's George Pettingill?" she asked, with a twinkle in her eye.

Amelia tossed her head.

"If he goes to my funeral he can take the trolley," she said with profound indifference. "You see I've only put three people down for the first carriage. I thought I'd just leave one place vacant, in case----"

"Exactly," said Belinda.

Before the successor to the Columbia Soph.o.m.ore appeared upon the horizon to complicate the carriage problem anew, the funeral fad had run its course and the wills of Amelia and her satellites had gone the way of all waste paper.

CHAPTER X

ADELINA AND THE DRAMA

THE Youngest Teacher looked across the room at the new girl and tried to goad her conscience into action. New girls were her specialty. She was an expert in homesickness, a professional drier of tears and promoter of cheerfulness. When she really brought her batteries into action the most forlorn of new pupils wiped her eyes and decided that boarding-school life might have its sunny side.

Gradually the Misses Ryder and Belinda's fellow-teachers had recognised the masterly effectiveness of her system and her personality, and had shifted the responsibility of "settling" the new girls to the Youngest Teacher's shoulders. As a rule, Belinda cheerfully bowed her very fine shoulders to the burden. She knew that as an accomplished diplomat she was of surpa.s.sing value, and that her heart-to-heart relations with the pupils were of more service than her guidance in the paths of English.

She comforted the homesick, set the shy at ease, drew confidences from the reserved, restrained the extravagances of the gushing.

But on this January evening she felt a colossal indifference concerning the welfare of girls in general and of new girls in particular--a strong disinclination to a.s.sume any responsibility in regard to the girl who sat alone upon the highly ornamental Louis Quinze sofa.

The newcomer was good looking, in an overgrown, florid, spectacular fashion. Belinda took note of her thick yellow hair, her big blue eyes, her statuesque proportions. She noted, too, that the yellow hair was dressed picturesquely but untidily, that the big eyes rolled from side to side self-consciously, that the statuesque figure was incased in a too tightly laced corset.

Miss Adelina Wilson did not look promising, but her family was--so Miss Ryder had been credibly informed--an ornament to Cayuga County, and Mr.

Wilson, pere, who had called to make arrangements for his daughter's schooling, had seemed a gentlemanly, mild, slightly hara.s.sed man, of a type essentially American--a shrewd, successful business man, embarra.s.sed by the responsibility of a family he could support but could not understand.