She spoke only when she was spoken to, but some of her odd, unexpected replies made Herr Vogelbaum look up with an interest he rarely took in anything outside of his music and his dinner.  Miss Chilton was so amused at her accounts of Arizona life, that she invited her up to her room, and led her into a conversation that revealed her most original traits.

“She’s a bright little thing,” Miss Chilton reported to Madam afterward, “The kind of a girl who is bound to be popular in a school, just because she’s so different and interesting.”

“She is more than that,” answered Madam, smiling over the recollection of some of her quaint speeches.  “She is lovable.  She has ’the divine gift of making friends,’”

CHAPTER III

ROOM-MATES

Up in her orderly room, on opening day, Mary listened to the bustle of arrivals, and the stir of unpacking going on all over the house.  The cordial greetings called back and forth from the various rooms and the laughter in the halls made her long to have a part in the general sociability.  She wished that it were necessary for her to borrow a hammer or to ask information about the trunk-room and the porter, as the other new girls were doing.  That would give her an excuse for going into some of the rooms and making acquaintance with their occupants.  But everything was in absolute order, and she was already familiar with the place and its rules.  There was nothing for her to do but take out her bead-work and occupy herself with that as best she could until the arrival of her room-mate.

She set her door invitingly open, ready to meet more than half way any advances her neighbours might choose to make.  While she sorted her beads she amused herself by fitting together the scraps of conversation which floated her way, and making guesses as to the personality of the speakers.  Twice her open door brought the reward of a transient visitor.  Once a jolly Sophomore glanced in to say “I just wanted to see who has the American Beauty room.  That’s what we called it last term when Kitty Walton and Lloyd Sherman had it.”

Soon after, a girl across the hall whom Mary had already identified as one Dora Irene Derwent, called Dorene for short, darted in unceremoniously with an agonized plea for a bit of court-plaster.

“I cut my finger on a piece of glass in a picture frame that got broken in my trunk,” she explained, unwinding her handkerchief to see if the bleeding had stopped.  “I can’t find my emergency case, and Cornie Dean never was known to keep anything of the sort.  All the other rooms are so upset I knew it was of no use to apply to them.”

Happy that such an opportunity had come at last and that she could supply the demand, Mary examined the injured finger and began to trim a strip of plaster the required size.  At the moment of cutting herself Dorene had dropped the broken glass, but for some unaccountable reason had thrust the frame under her arm, and was holding it hugged tight to her side by her elbow.  Now as she put out her hand for Mary’s inspection, she sat down on the edge of the bed, and let the frame slip from her grasp to the counterpane.  The photograph side lay uppermost, and Mary, glancing at it casually, gave an exclamation of surprise.