CHAPTER III “HILL TOP”

“I guess perhaps I can manage it, Miss Ford; since it’s you who asks it,” replied the man, smiling admiringly down at the pretty face upturned to his.

“Thanks, a heap! We’ll be waiting right here for it. Now,” turning to Patricia and leading her over to the three girls she had just left, “I want you to meet some of my friends. They’re all Arnold Hall girls. This is Lucile Evans,” stopping in front of a slight, pale-faced girl whose red lips protruded in a pout, which, Patricia later learned, was perpetual. Without a change of expression, she bowed rather indifferently at Patricia.

“I’m Jane Temple,” announced the second girl, advancing cordially as if to make up for Lucile’s rudeness.

As Patricia took Jane’s hand and looked into a pair of honest grey eyes, and at the good-humored smiling lips, she felt that here was a girl to whom one could always tie in any emergency.

“The last of this trio is Hazel Leland,” continued Anne; “our beauty.”

“Now, Anne, don’t embarrass me,” protested the girl, smiling gayly at Patricia.

She was a beauty; big, starry grey eyes; lovely, light brown hair which curled all over her head in little rings, like a baby’s; and a figure as slight and lithe as a boy’s.

“The newcomer in our midst,” concluded Anne, putting her arm around Patricia, “is Patricia Randall, formerly of Brentwood, now a member of the illustrious Sophomore class of Granard; and, what’s more, an inmate of Arnold Hall.”

“Good for you!” ejaculated Hazel, patting Patricia on the back, while the other two girls shot surprised, inquiring glances at Anne, who pretended not to see them.

“Why don’t we go on up?” drawled Lucile, opening her mouth for the first time.

“Going to wait for Patricia’s bag,” replied Anne quickly.

“Oh,” was Lucile’s brief response; but some way there was an unpleasant note in it, which made Patricia flush uncomfortably.

“There’s no need of my detaining you all,” she said. “I can wait by myself.”

“Now, darling,” protested Anne, “we’d never be so unhospitable to a new member of our household as that. You needn’t wait if you prefer not to, Lu.”

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