He had a merry wit and a hearty laugh, but one had only to look at him closely to feel that he had borne burdens and that his attainments had been bought with a price.  He was going to be difficult to please, and the girls of all ages drew deep breaths of anticipation and knew that they should study as never before.  The vice-principal, a lady of fine attainments, was temporarily in eclipse, and such an astounding love for the classics swept through young Beulah that nobody could understand it.  Ralph Thurston taught Latin and Greek himself, but parents did not at first observe the mysterious connection between cause and effect.  It was all very young and artless and innocent; helpful and stimulating too, for Thurston was no budding ladies’ man, but a thoroughly good fellow, manly enough to attract the boys and hold their interest.

The entrance of the four Careys and two Lords into the list of students had an inspiring effect upon the whole school.  So far as scholarship was concerned they were often outstripped by their country neighbors, but the Careys had seen so much of the world that they had a great deal of general culture, and the academy atmosphere was affected by it.  Olive, Nancy, and Gilbert went into the highest class; Kathleen, Julia, and Cyril into the one below.

The intimacy of Nancy and Olive was a romantic and ardent one.  Olive had never had a real companion in her life; Nancy’s friends dotted the universe wherever she had chanced to live.  Olive was uncommunicative, shy, and stiff with all but a chosen few; Nancy was at ease in all assemblies.  It was Nancy’s sympathy and enthusiasm and warmth that attracted Olive Lord, and it was the combination of Olive’s genius and her need of love, that held Nancy.

Never were two human creatures more unlike in their ways of thought.  Olive had lived in Beulah seven years, and knew scarcely any one because of her father’s eccentricities and his indifference to the world; but had you immured Nancy in a convent she would have made a large circle of acquaintances from the window of her cell, before a month passed over her head.  She had an ardent interest in her fellow creatures, and whenever they strayed from the strict path of rectitude, she was consumed with a desire to set them straight.  If Olive had seen a drunken man lying in a ditch, she would scarcely have looked at him, much less inquired his name.  Nancy would have sat by until he recovered himself, if possible, or found somebody to take him to his destination.  As for the delightful opportunity of persuading him of his folly, she would have jumped at the chance when she was fifteen or sixteen, but as she grew older she observed a little more reticence in these delicate matters, at least when she was endeavoring to reform her elders.  She had succeeded in making young Nat Harmon stop cigarette smoking, but he was privately less convinced of the error of his ways than he was bewitched by Nancy.  She promised readily to wear a blue ribbon and sit on the platform in the Baptist Chapel at the Annual Meeting of the Junior Temperance League.  On the eve of the affair she even would gladly have made a speech when the president begged her to do so, but the horror-stricken Olive succeeded in stopping her, and her mother firmly stood by Olive.