"And me with a strange roommate," wailed Mabel, also in tears. "And I don't even know what she looks like."
"You'll be so busy studying that you won't have time to miss Lakeville," assured Mr. Black. "Now run back like good girls so I can catch my train. I'll send you a great big box of candy from Chicago tomorrow and new friends will flock about you like flies."
Before many hours had passed, Mabel discovered that a strange roommate was not so bad after all because Isabelle Carew of Kentucky had arrived two days earlier and knew when to go to bed, when to get up, where to find the class rooms and most important of all, the dining room. Mabel thoroughly enjoyed imparting her new knowledge to her Lakeville friends.
Each day, they discovered, was divided into sections of forty minutes each, and each section was filled to the brim. A bell rang every forty minutes--Sallie had to ring it.
"And my goodness!" said weary Mabel, during visiting hour, when the five friends were stretched at length across Henrietta's narrow bed, "it's just awful to jump up and do something different every time that bell rings."
"Never mind," soothed Henrietta, "we don't have to do a single thing from three in the afternoon until six, except on walking days. We don't have to go to gym from two to three unless we want to. We don't have to study evenings unless we like but except on dancing nights we have to stay in our own rooms and keep quiet in case anybody _does_ want to study."
"There's kind of a woodsy grove over that way--south, I guess," said Jean. "We can go as far as the road, Cora says. She's that thin girl with freckles--an old girl. Sometimes you can find nuts; and, in the spring, there are lots of wild flowers."
"Spring will never get here," groaned Marjory.
"We aren't allowed to go to town at all," said Jean, "except sometimes to lectures and concerts at the Theological Seminary, and there's a regular shopping day sometimes. Cora says it isn't a bit like it was here last year--a great many things have been changed. All the teachers, for one thing. There's a secret. Something happened, but she says that Doctor Rhodes took all the old girls into his office as soon as they came and made them promise not to tell the new girls--or anybody."