She was not blue-eyed and appealing.  She was large, she was self-assured, and she took possession of the room in an expansive all-pervading sort of way that made Mary feel very small and insignificant.  The room itself that heretofore had been so spacious suddenly seemed to shrink, and when a huge trunk was brought in, it was fairly crowded.

Mary drew her chair into the narrow space between the bed and the window, but even there she felt in the way.  “I don’t see why I should,” she thought with vague resentment.  “It’s as much my room as hers.”

It was one of the requirements of the school that all trunks must be emptied and sent to the store-room on arrival, and presently, as Ethelinda seemed ignorant of the rule, Mary told her and offered to help her unpack.  The answer was excessively polite, so polite that it left Mary at greater arm’s length than before.  Fanchon was to do the unpacking.  She had come on purpose for that.  In a few moments Fanchon came in, a middle-aged woman who had accompanied her from home, and who was to return as soon as her charge was properly settled.  The two conversed in French, as Ethelinda, with her hands clasped behind her head, tipped back in a rocking chair and lazily watched proceedings.  She was utterly regardless of Mary’s presence.

“I might as well be the door-knob for all the notice she takes of me,” thought Mary resentfully, “Well, she may prove to be as much as a tin whistle, but she certainly isn’t the prize I had hoped to find.”

She cast another furtive glance at her over her lead-stringing, slowly making up her estimate of her.

“She’s what Joyce would call a drab blonde—­washed out complexion and sallow hair.  She looks drab all the way through to me, but she may be the kind that improves on acquaintance.  She certainly has a good figure, and looks as stylish as one of those fashion ladies in Vogue.”

From time to time Mary proffered bits of information as occasion offered, as to which of the drawers were empty and how to pull the wardrobe door a certain way when it stuck, but her friendly advances were so coldly received, that presently she slipped out of the room and went over to the East wing to see what Elise Walton was doing.

Elise had already made friends with her room-mate, a little dumpling of a girl by the name of Agnes Olive Miggs, and was calling her A.O. as every one else did.  In five minutes Mary was calling her A.O. too, and wishing a little enviously that either one of these bright friendly girls could have fallen to her lot instead of the polite iceberg she had run away from.

“But I won’t complain of her to them,” she thought loyally.  “Maybe she’ll improve on acquaintance and be so nice that I’d be sorry some day that I said anything against her.”

Several other girls came in while she sat there, and a box of candy was passed around.  Finding herself in the company of congenial young spirits was a new experience for Mary.