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However bare and even cold the corridors looked, the bedroom into which Hester was ushered by no means corresponded with this appearance. It was a small, but daintily-furnished little room. The floor was carpeted with green felt, the one window was hung with pretty draperies, and two little, narrow, white beds were arranged gracefully with French canopies. All the furniture in the room was of a minute description, but good of its kind. Beside each bed stood a mahogany chest of drawers. At two corresponding corners were marble washhand-stands, and even two pretty, toilet tables stood side by side in the recess of the window. But the sight that perhaps pleased Hester most was a small bright fire which burnt in the grate.
Now, dear, this is your room. As you have arrived first you can choose your own bed and your own chest of drawers. Ah, that is right, Ellen has unfastened your portmanteau; she will unpack your trunk to-night, and take it to the box-room. Now, dear, smooth your hair and wash your hands. The gong will sound instantly. I will come for you when it does.
Chapter Four Little Drawing-Rooms And Little Tiffs
I will introduce you to your school-fellows, and I hope
your future friends, said Miss Danesbury. After tea you will come with me to see Mrs Willis she is never in the school-room at tea-time. Mdlle. Perier or Miss Good usually superintends. Now, my dear, come along why, surely you are not frightened?
Oh, please, may I sit near you? asked Hester.
No, my love; I take care of the little ones, and they are at a table by themselves. Now, come in at once the moment you dread will soon be over, and it is nothing, my love really nothing.
Nothing! never, as long as Hester lived, did she forget the supreme agony of terror and shyness which came over her as she entered that long, low, brightly-lighted room. The forty pairs of curious eyes which were raised inquisitively to her face became as torturing as forty burning suns. She felt an almost uncontrollable desire to run away and hide she wondered if she could possibly keep from screaming aloud. In the end she found herself, she scarcely knew how, seated beside a gentle, sweet-mannered girl, and munching bread and butter which tasted drier than sawdust, and occasionally trying to sip something very hot and scalding which she vaguely understood went by the name of tea. The buzzing voices all chattering eagerly in French, and the occasional sharp, high-pitched reprimands coming in peremptory tones from the thin lips of Mdlle. Perier, sounded far off and distant her head was dizzy, her eyes swam the tired and shy child endured tortures.
In after-days, in long after-years when the memory of Lavender House was to come back to Hetty Thornton as one of the sweetest, brightest episodes in her existence in the days when she was to know almost every blade of grass in the gardens, and to be familiar with each corner of the old house, with each face which now appeared so strange, she might wonder at her feelings to-night, but never even then could she forget them.
She sat at the table in a dream, trying to eat the tasteless bread and butter. Suddenly and swiftly the thick and somewhat stale piece of bread on her plate was exchanged for a thin, fresh, and delicately-cut slice.
Eat that, whispered a voice I know the other is horrid. Its a shame of Perier to give such stuff to a stranger.
Mdlle. Cécile, you are transgressing: you are talking English, came in a torrent of rapid French from the head of the table. You lose a conduct mark, maamselle.
The young girl who sat next Hester inclined her head gently and submissively, and Hester, venturing to glance at her, saw that a delicate pink had spread itself over her pale face. She was a plain girl; but even Hester, in this first moment of terror, could scarcely have been afraid of her, so benign was her expression, so sweet the glance from her soft, full brown eyes. Hester now further observed that the thin bread and butter had been removed from Cecils own plate. She began to wonder why this girl was indulged with better food than the rest of her comrades.
Hester was beginning to feel a little less shy, and was taking one or two furtive glances at her companions, when she suddenly felt herself turning crimson, and all her agony of shyness and dislike to her school-life returning. She encountered the full, bright, quizzical gaze of the girl who had made personal remarks about her in the porters room. The merry black eyes of this gipsy maiden fairly twinkled with suppressed fun when they met hers, and the bright head even nodded audaciously across the table to her.
Not for worlds would Hester return this friendly greeting she still held to her opinion that Miss Forest was one of the most ill-bred people she had ever met, and, in addition to feeling a considerable amount of fear of her, she quite made up her mind that she would never be on friendly terms with so underbred a girl.
At this moment grace was repeated in sonorous tones by a stern-looking person who sat at the foot of the long table, and whom Hester had not before noticed. Instantly the girls rose from their seats, and began to file in orderly procession out of the tea-room. Hester looked round in terror for the friendly Miss Danesbury, but she could not catch sight of her anywhere. At this moment, however, her companion of the tea-table touched her arm.