CHAPTER II

HER FATHER PLACED HER on a Hudson River steamer in charge of the captain, whom he knew, and in company with two other little girls, who were returning to the school of Friend Isaac and Friend Ruth after a short vacation.

Dawn, attired in the grave Quaker garb of the school, leaned over the rail of the deck, inconsequently swinging by its ribbons her long gray pocket containing a hundred dollars wherewith to pay her entrance fee and provide necessities, and watched her unloved father walk away from the landing.

“Thee and thou and thy long pocket!” called out a saucy deck-hand to the three little girls, and Dawn turned with an angry flash in her eyes to take up the work of facing the world single-handed.

She did not drop the pocket into the water, nor fall overboard, but bore herself discreetly all through the journey, and made her entrance into the new life demurely, save for the independent stand she took upon her arrival:

“My name is Dawn Van Rensselaer, and my mother wishes me to wear my curls just as they are.”

Her two fellow-travellers had given her cause to believe that there would be an immediate raid made upon her precious curls, and her determined spirit decided to make a stand at the start, and not to give in for anything. The quiet remark created almost a panic for a brief moment, coming thus unexpectedly into the decorous order of the place. Friend Ruth caught her breath, and two faint pink spots appeared in her smooth cheeks.

“Thee will wear thy hair smoothly plaited, child, as the others do, unless it be cut close,” she said decidedly, laying her thin pink lips smoothly together over even teeth. “Thee will write to thy mother that it is our custom here to allow nothing frivolous or worldly in the dress of our pupils.”

One glance at the cool gray eye of her oppressor decided Dawn to hide in her heart forever the fact that the mother whose wish she was flaunting was no more in this world, nor longer had the legal right to express her wishes concerning her child.