"The three girls over there with the fancy hair are Seniors. The other big girls at that table are Juniors. They don't mix very much with the rest of us."
"Won't you have a biscuit?" asked a gentle voice at Bettie's right. "I'm Sarah Dickinson--Sallie for short."
Bettie looked at Sallie. She saw a slender girl of about fifteen, with dark blue, rather sad eyes, light brown hair and a pale skin. Her shoulders drooped a little and there was something rather pathetic about her smile. The blue collar of her middy blouse was very much faded. This was very noticeable because, just at the beginning of the term as it was, nearly all the garments in sight were brand new.
"I'm the _oldest_ girl," returned Sallie. "I've been here, vacations and all, for five years. I haven't any home of my own."
Later, Bettie learned more about Sallie. Her mother had died when Sallie was about nine years old. For a time she had lived alone with her father but he had decided that she would be better off in a girls' school. An old man, her grandfather, perhaps, had brought her to Highland Hall, paying her tuition for one year in advance. Something had happened to her father. When the school year was finished it was discovered that Sallie had no home to go to, her relatives having somehow disappeared. Anne Blodgett, a last year's girl who told Bettie about it, was not very sure of her facts. Anyway, the housekeeper had allowed her to stay because the little girl seemed likely to prove useful--there were many errands to do in a house like that.
She was still staying and still proving useful; but the kindly housekeeper had departed and stern Mrs. Rhodes had apparently taken the housekeeper's place. Sallie was kept busier than ever. She sometimes seemed a bit dazed and bewildered and just a little bit down-hearted; but at first she had very little to say about herself.
Mr. Black departed very soon after dinner. The girls were permitted to walk to the last corner of the school premises with him. There they clung to him tearfully and begged him to make a great many business trips to Chicago in order to visit them at Highland Hall.
"I know," sobbed Bettie, "that we're going to be homesick. I'm homesick _now_. It's so _different_. All those strange girls and that awful Mrs. Rhodes."