Part 2 (2/2)
Priscilla blushed.
”I am sorry I spoke too eagerly,” she said.
”Oh, no, not a bit too eagerly.”
”But please tell me where I ought to have seated myself.”
”There is a table near that lower entrance, Miss----”
”Peel,” interposed Priscilla. ”My name is Priscilla Peel.”
”How quaint and great-grandmotherly. Quite delicious! Well, Miss Peel, by that entrance door is a table, a table rather in a draught, and consecrated to the freshers-- there the freshers humbly partake of nourishment.”
”I see. Then I am as far from the right place as I can be.”
”About as far as you can be.”
”And that is why all the girls have stared so at me.”
”Yes, of course; but let them stare. Who minds such a trifle?”
Priscilla sat silent for a few moments. One of the neat waiting-maids removed her plate; her almost untasted dinner lay upon it. Miss Oliphant turned to attack some roast mutton with truly British vigor.
By and by Priscilla's voice, stiff but with a break in it, fell upon her ear.
”I think the students at St. Benet's must be very cruel.”
”My dear Miss Peel, the honor of the most fascinating college in England is imperiled. Unsay those words.”
Maggie Oliphant was joking. Her voice was gay with badinage, her eyes brimful of laughter. But Priscilla, unaccustomed to light repartee or chaff in any form, replied to her with heavy and pained seriousness.
”I think the students here are cruel,” she repeated. ”How can a stranger know which is the dons' entrance and which is the right seat to take at table? If n.o.body shows her, how can a stranger know? I do think the students are cruel, and I am sorry-- very sorry I came.”
CHAPTER III
AN UNWILLING AT HOME
MOST of the girls who sat at those dinner-tables had fringed or tousled or curled locks. Priscilla's were brushed simply away from her broad forehead. After saying her last words, she bent her head low over her plate and longed even for the protection of a fringe to hide her burning blushes. Her momentary courage had evaporated; she was shocked at having betrayed herself to a stranger; her brief fit of pa.s.sion left her stiffer and shyer than ever. Blinding tears rushed to Priscilla's eyes, and her terror was that they would drop on to her plate. Suppose some of those horrid girls saw her crying? Hateful thought. She would rather die than show emotion before them.
At this moment a soft, plump little hand was slipped into hers and the sweetest of voices said:
”I am so sorry anything has seemed unkind to you. Believe me, we are not what you imagine. We have our fun and our prejudices, of course, but we are not what you think we are.”
Priscilla could not help smiling, nor could she resist slightly squeezing the fingers which touched hers.
”You are not unkind, I know,” she answered; and she ate the rest of her dinner in a comforted frame of mind.
After dinner one of the lecturers who resided at Heath Hall, a pleasant, bright girl of two- or three-and-twenty, came and introduced herself, and presently took Priscilla with her to her own room, to talk over the line of study which the young girl proposed to take up.
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