"Not too much room here!" she commented. "It reminds me of a cabin on board ship. I wonder they don't rig up berths. I hope they won't be long bringing up my box. Oh, here it is!"
Not only did the trunk arrive, but Betty and Sylvia also put in an appearance, both very lively and talkative, and full of news.
"Hallo, Marjorie! Do you know Renie's been moved to No. 5? She wants to be with Mavie Chapman. They asked Norty before the holidays, and never told us a word. Wasn't it mean?"
"Molly's brought a younger sister--Nancy, her name is. We travelled together from Euston. She's in St. Ethelberta's, of course--rather a jolly kid."
"Annie Grey has twisted her ankle, and won't be able to come back for a week. Luck for her!"
"Valerie Hall's brother has been wounded, and Magsie Picton's brother has been mentioned in dispatches, and Miss Duckworth has lost her nephew."
"Miss Pollard's wearing an engagement ring, but she won't tell anybody anything about it; and Miss Gordon was married in the holidays--a war wedding. Oh yes! she has come back to school, but we've got to call her Mrs. Greenbank now. Won't it be funny? The Empress has two little nieces staying with her--they're five and seven, such sweet little kiddies, with curly hair. Their father's at the front."
The new girl listened with apparent interest as Betty and Sylvia rattled on, but she did not interrupt, and waited until she was questioned before she gave an account of herself.
"I live up north, in Cumberland. Yes, I've been to school before. I've one brother. No, he's not at the front. I haven't unpacked his photo. I can't tell whether I like Brackenfield yet; I've only been here half an hour."
As she still seemed at the shy stage, Betty and Sylvia stopped catechizing her and concerned themselves with their own affairs. The new-comer went on quietly with her unpacking, taking no notice of her room-mates, but when the gong sounded for tea she allowed Betty and Sylvia to pass, then looked half-appealingly, half-whimsically at Marjorie.
"May I go down with you?" she asked. "I don't know my way about yet. Sorry to be a nuisance. You can drop me if you like when you've landed me in the dining-room. I don't want to tag on."
At the end of a week opinions in Dormitory No. 9 were divided on the subject of Chrissie Lang. Betty and Sylvia frankly regretted Irene, and were not disposed to extend too hearty a welcome to her substitute. It was really in the first instance because Betty and Sylvia were disagreeable to Chrissie that Marjorie took her up. It was more in a spirit of opposition to her room-mates than of philanthropy towards the new-comer. Betty and Sylvia were inclined to have fun together and leave Marjorie out of their calculations, a state of affairs which she hotly resented. During the whole of last term she had not found a chum. She was rather friendly with Mollie Simpson, but Mollie was in another dormitory, and this term had been moved into IV Upper A, so that they were no longer working together in form. It was perhaps only natural that she adopted Chrissie; she certainly found her an amusing companion, if nothing more. Chrissie was humorous, and always inclined for fun. She kept up a constant fire of little jokes. She would draw absurd pictures of girls or mistresses on the edge of her blotting-paper, or write parodies on popular poems. She was evidently much attracted to Marjorie, yet she was one of those people with whom one never grows really intimate. One may know them for years without ever getting beyond the outside crust, and the heart of them always remains a sealed book. There is a certain magnetism in friendship. It is perhaps only once or twice in a lifetime that we meet the one with whom our spirit can really fuse, the kindred soul who seems always able to understand and sympathize. In the hurry and bustle of school life, however, it is something to have a congenial comrade, if it is only a girl who will sit next you at meals, walk to church with you in crocodile, and take your side in arguments with your room-mates.