Just then a girl sitting up near the driver’s seat leaned forward.

“Ada!” she called.  “Ada Nansen!  Are you the girl they say brought five trunks and three hat boxes?”

“Well, they’re little ones!” said the girl sitting opposite Betty.  “I wanted to bring three wardrobe trunks, but mother thought Mrs. Eustice might make a fuss.”

So the girl’s name was Ada Nansen.  Betty was sure she remembered their encounter on the train, if for no other reason than that Ada studiously refused to meet her eye.  Betty was too inexperienced to know that a certain type of girl never takes a step toward making a new friend unless she has the worldly standing of that friend first clearly fixed in her mind.

“What gorgeous furs she has!” whispered Norma Guerin.  “Do you know her, Betty?”

Betty shook her head.  Strictly speaking, she did not know Ada.  What she did know of her was not pleasant, and it was part of Betty’s personal creed never to repeat anything unkind if nothing good was to come of it.

“I can tell Bob, ’cause he knows about her,” she said to herself.  “Won’t he be surprised!  I do hope she hasn’t brought a huge wardrobe to school to make Norma and Alice feel bad.”

Though both the Guerin girls wore the neatest blouses and suits, any girl could immediately have told you that their clothes were not new that season and that the little bag each carried had been oiled and polished at home.

That Ada Nansen’s trunks were worrying Norma, too, her next remark showed.

“Alice and I have only one trunk between us,” she confided to Betty.  “Mother said Mrs. Eustice never allowed the girls to dress much.  I made Alice’s party frock and mine, too.  They’re plain white.”

“So’s mine,” said Betty quickly.  “Mrs. Littell wouldn’t let her daughters have elaborate clothes, and the Littells have oceans of money.  I don’t believe Ada can wear her fine feathers now she has ’em.”

Twenty minutes’ ride brought them in sight of the school, and as the bus turned down the road that led to the lake, many exclamations of pleasure were heard.

A double row of weeping willows, now bare, of course, bordered the lake, and the sloping lawns of the school led down to these.  The red brick buildings of the Salsette Academy could be glimpsed on the other shore.  Shadyside consisted of a large brick and limestone building that the last term pupils in the busses obligingly explained was the “administration,” where classes were taught.  The gymnasium was also in this building.  In addition were three gray stone buildings, connected with bridges, in which were the dormitories, the teachers’ rooms, the dining room, the infirmary, and the kitchens.  The administration building was also connected with the other buildings by a covered passageway which, they were to discover, was opened only in bad weather.  Mrs. Eustice, the principal, had a theory that girls did not get out into the fresh air often enough.