CHAPTER X

A FAMOUS INTRODUCTION

The girls crowded into the dining hall from all directions. Nan and Bess were told that there were many who had not yet arrived; but to the two strangers from Tillbury it seemed as though there was a great throng.

The curious glances flung at Nan and her chum confused them, the buzz of conversation added to their embarrassment, and had it not been for the red-haired girl, Laura Polk, they would have been tempted to turn and flee. They were quickly shown to seats, however, at a table where every seat was filled with laughing, chattering girls. As the school was not yet fully organized for work, there was no person in authority to take the head of the table. Nan and Bess were glad to note that their acquaintance, the red-haired girl, was with them. Bess was under the embarrassing necessity of holding the lunch box in her lap.

"Hullo, Laura!" whispered one mischievous girl from across the table. "I thought you were going to have your hair dyed this vacation?"

"So I did," declared Miss Polk gravely.

"Well! I must say it didn't seem to do it any good," was the next observation.

"That's just it," said the serious, red-haired girl. "The dye didn't take."

"I really do wonder, Laura," said another of her schoolmates, "how your hair ever came to be such a very reddish red."

"I had scarlet fever when I was very young," said Miss Polk, promptly, "and it settled in my hair."

The smothered laughter over this had scarcely subsided when another girl asked: "Say, Polk! what's your new chum, there, got in her lap?"

This pointed question was aimed at Bess, who blushed furiously. Laura remained as grave as a judge, and explained:

"Why, it's her lunch. She seems to be afraid she won't get supper enough here and has brought reinforcements."

The laughter that went up at this sally drew the attention of many sitting near to that table. Bess Harley's eyes filled with angry tears. She saw that the red-haired girl had set a trap for her, and she had walked right into it.

Bess really had feared she would not have supper enough. Having refused to eat out of the lunch box on the train, her appetite had now begun unmistakably to manifest itself. If the usual supper served the pupils of Lakeview Hall was as scanty as Laura Polk had intimated, the remains of the lunch Bess' mother had bought for the two chums in Chicago would be very welcome indeed.

A glance around the table, however, soon assured even unobservant Bess that the red-haired girl was letting her tongue run idly when she criticised the food served. There were heaps of bread and biscuit, plenty of golden butter, and a pitcher of milk that had _not_ been twice skimmed, beside each plate. Besides, there were apple sauce and sliced peaches and cold meat in abundance. The supper was plain, but plentiful enough, considering that Dr. Prescott believed in giving her girls their hearty meal at noon.

Nan had at once suspected that Laura Polk was joking. But, even she had not appreciated the fact that the red-haired girl was deliberately laying a trap for them until the subject of the lunch box was brought up. Nan whispered quickly to Bess:

"Laugh! laugh! Laugh with them, instead of letting them laugh at you!"

But Bess could not do that. She was very angry. And as soon as these fun-loving girls saw she had lost her temper, they kept the joke up.

Bess angrily allowed the lunch box to fall to the floor under the table. But, as the meal progressed, gradually almost every dish on the table gravitated toward Bess' plate.

"Want any more of your apple sauce, Cora?" the question would be raised, quite gravely. "No? Well do pass it this way, we're hungry over here," and the half-eaten apple sauce would appear at Bess Harley's elbow.

Her plate was soon ringed about with pitchers of milk, half-empty butter plates, broken biscuits, dabs of peaches and apple sauce in lonely-looking saucers. Nan was almost choked with a desire to laugh; and yet she was sorry for her chum, too. If Bess had only been able to take the joke in good part!

"Don't show that you are so disturbed by their fun," begged Nan of her friend.

"Fun! I'll write my mother and have her take me away from here," muttered Bess, in a rage. "Why, these girls are all _beasts_!"

"Hush, honey! don't make it worse than it already is," advised sensible Nan. "The madder you get the more they will enjoy teasing you."

A rather severe and plainly dressed woman, wearing spectacles, who had been walking about among the tables, now came to the one where Nan and Bess were seated. She looked somewhat suspiciously at the dishes pushed so close to Bess Harley's plate; but all the girls at the table were as sober as they could be.

"Dr. Prescott tells me you are the two girls from Tillbury," she said to Nan.

"Yes," was the reply. "My friend is Bess Harley and I am Nan Sherwood."

"We are glad to have you with us, and you have been assigned to Number Seven, Corridor Four. Your trunks will be unpacked in the trunk room in the basement to-morrow." Then she flashed another glance at the array of dishes before Bess.

"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded.

"I--I----," Bess stammered, and some of the girls gave suppressed giggles.

Laura Polk soberly came to her rescue--or appeared to.

"This is her birthday, and all the girls have been giving her presents. At least, that is the way I understand it."

Irrepressible laughter broke out around the table. Even Mrs. Cupp smiled grimly.

"I fancy you started the birthday presentation, Laura," she said. "Let us have no more of it."

When she had passed along Laura Polk leaned forward to whisper shrilly across Nan to Bess:

"Have a care, Bess! I think Mrs. Cupp suspects you. Don't try to smuggle any of that apple sauce up to Room Seven, Corridor Four, in your stocking!"

Of course this was all very ridiculous, and, taken in the right spirit, the introduction of Nan Sherwood's chum to Lakeview Hall, would not have been so bad. This was really a mild initiation to the fraternal companionship of a lot of gay, fun-loving girls.

But Bess had a high sense of her own dignity. At home, in Tillbury, because her father was an influential man, and her family of some local importance, nobody had ever treated her in this way. To be an object of the ridicule of strangers is a hard trial at best. Just then, to Bess' mind, it seemed as though her whole school life at Lakeview Hall must be spoiled by this opening incident.

Nan felt for her friend, for she well knew how sensitive Bess was. But she knew this was all in fun. She could not help but be amused by the red-haired girl's jokes. There wasn't a scrap of harm in anything the exuberant one did or said. There was no meanness in Laura Polk. She was not like Linda Riggs.

Had it not been for Nan, Bess would never have found her way to Room Seven, Corridor Four, she was so blinded with angry tears. The room they were to occupy together was up two flights of broad stairs, and had a wide window overlooking the lake. Nan knew this to be the fact at once, for she went to the open window, heard the soughing of the uneasy waves on the pebbly beach far below, and saw the red, winking eye of the lighthouse at the mouth of Freeling Inlet.

"This is a lovely room, Bess," she declared, as she snapped on the electric light.

Bess banged the door viciously. "I don't care how nice it is! I sha'n't stay here!" she cried.

"Oh, pshaw, Bess! you don't mean that," returned Nan.

"Yes, I do--so now! I won't remain to be insulted by these girls! My mother won't want me to. I shall write her----"

"You _wouldn't_?" cried Nan, in horror.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"You don't mean to say you would trouble and worry your mother about such a thing, just as soon as you get here?"

"We--ell!"

"I wouldn't do that for anything," Nan urged. "And, besides, I don't think the girls meant any real harm."

"That homely, red-headed Polk girl is just as mean as she can be!"

"But she has to take jokes herself about her red hair."

"I don't care!" grumbled Bess. "She has no right to play such mean tricks on _me_. Why did she tell me to take that horrid old lunch box in to supper?"

"Because she foresaw just what would happen," chuckled Nan.

"Oh! you can laugh!" cried Bess.

"We should not have been so gullible," Nan declared. "That was a perfectly ridiculous story Laura told us about the food being so poor and scanty, and we should not have believed it."

Bess was staring at her with angry sparks in her eyes. She suddenly burst out with:

"That old lunch box! If it hadn't been for you, Nan Sherwood, we would not have brought it here with us."

"Why----Is that quite right, Bess?" gently suggested Nan.

"Yes, it is!" snapped her chum. "If you had taken my advice you would have flung it out of the window and eaten in the dining car in a proper manner."

There were a good many retorts Nan might have made. She wanted to laugh, too. It did seem so ridiculous for Bess to carry on so over a silly joke. She was making a mountain out of a molehill.

But it would be worse than useless to argue the point, and to laugh would surely make her chum more bitter--perhaps open a real breach between them that not even time could heal.

So Nan, in her own inimitable, loving way, put both arms suddenly about Bess and kissed her. "I'm awfully sorry, dear; forgive me," she said, just as though the fault was all hers.

Bess broke down and wet Nan's shoulder with her angry tears. But they were a relief. She sobbed out at last:

"I hope I'll never, _never_ see a shoe-box lunch again! I just do----"

To interrupt her came a solemn summons on the door of Number Seven--_rap, rap, rap!_ The two newcomers to Lakeview Hall looked at each other, startled.