Katherines Sheaves | Page 2

rounded chin curving so gracefully into the white,
slender neck.
"Ah! Miss Minturn. I have had quite a search for you," she said,
reaching out a cordial hand to her; for, despite the girl's self- poise, she
had caught a quiver of loneliness on the expressive face. "I am Miss
Reynolds, the teacher of mathematics, and I have been commissioned
by Prof. Seabrook to find and show you to his study. But first, let me
present you to these chatterers."
She dropped the hand that was trembling in her clasp, and, slipping a
reassuring arm about the girl's waist, continued:

"Young ladies, this is Miss Minturn, a new junior. I can't present each
of you formally, for she is wanted immediately elsewhere; but I will
see that she finds you all out later."
Katherine nodded a smiling acknowledgment to the vigorous clapping
of hands and the hearty "Welcome, Miss Minturn, to Hilton." Then
Miss Reynolds led her away, and the interrupted chatter of the magpies
was resumed with redoubled animation, but now the new junior
absorbed the attention of everyone.
"Say, girls, isn't she a dear?" "Came this morning, did she? where from,
I wonder?" "My! but wasn't that a nobby traveling suit, and such a fit!"
"Katherine Minturn--pretty name, isn't it?" "Does anybody know
anything more about her?" were some of the comments and queries that
slipped from those supple instruments with a tendency towards
perpetual motion, which, sometimes, are described as organs that are
hung in the middle and wag at both ends-- school-girls' tongues.
"Hush!--sh!--sh! Oh, girls, do ring off, and perhaps I can give you a
point or two," cried a high-pitched voice with an unmistakable
Southern drawl, as a somewhat overdressed girl of nineteen or twenty
years re-enforced her appeal by vigorous gestures to attract attention,
whereupon the ever alert spirit of Curiosity silenced every loquacious
chatterer, except one who solemnly announced, "Ladies, Miss Minot
has the floor!"
"Yes," the speaker observed, "the new junior does strike one as being
downright stunning. She came from New York City, and"--with a
lugubrious sigh--"though I've never set eyes on her before, I was
informed this morning that she is to be my roommate for the remainder
of the year."
A burst of mirthful laughter rippled over a dozen pairs of rosy lips at
this last mournfully conveyed information.
"Aha! at last Miss Sadie Minot has got to come down to the lot of
common mortals and take in a chum!" cried a merry sprite, with a
saucy chuckle. "Oh, how you have spread yourself and luxuriated in

your solitary magnificence, and how every mother's daughter of us has
envied you your spacious quarters! Well, you know what old Sol. said
about 'pride' and a 'haughty spirit,' and the 'fall' always comes, first or
last. But, Sadie, my love, be comforted," she continued, with mock
sympathy, "and just try to realize what splendid discipline it will be for
you; one cannot have everything one wants, you know, even if one is
an heiress in one's own right- -eh, dearie?"
"But there's only one closet, and it is so full now," sighed Miss Minot,
ruefully.
"Hear! hear!" retorted the same mischievous maiden, whose name was
Clara Follet. "After having had undisturbed possession of a whole room
and closet for six long months she ungratefully bemoans----"
"And only one chest of drawers," pursued Sadie, in the same strain, but
with a comical quirk of an eye.
A chorus of mocking groans and derisive laughter greeted this wail.
"And all four crammed full with her superfluous finery," cried another
of the merry group. "Whatever will you do with it now, Sadie?"
"I'm sure I don't know, Ollie," retorted the pretty "heiress," with a
quizzical uplifting of her brows, "unless you take half of it off my
hands altogether, instead of coming to borrow so often."
Shrieks of appreciative mirth followed this deftly shot arrow, for it was
a well-known fact that Ollie Grant, the pet of the school, was an
easy-going little body, very prone to allow her wardrobe to get in a sad
plight and then throw herself upon the mercy of others, to patch her up,
in the event of an emergency.
But Miss Ollie was equal to the occasion.
"Really, Sadie, that would help you out, wouldn't it? and save me a lot
of trotting back and forth," she demurely responded, though the
dimples played a lively game of hide-and-seek in her plump cheeks.

"There's such a love of a lace jacket in her second drawer, girls; my
eyes water with envy every time I get a glimpse of it; and a few of
those ravishing stocks that you've been laying in of late wouldn't come
amiss. There's that lavender satin waist, too, you bought at Jerome's the
other day. I