He appeared to great advantage surrounded by a bevy of girls clamoring for letters and messages.

To me the scene was fairy-land.

I had never before seen anything so grand as the great hall with its polished stairway.

We had supper in the housekeeper's room, and I was taken up this stairway, and then up and up a corkscrew cousin until we reached the attic, which stretched over the whole house, one great dormitory called the "bee-hive." Here I was to sleep with Helen Semple, a Pittsburg girl, of about my own age, a frail blonde, who quite won my heart at our first meeting.
Next day was Sabbath, and I was greatly surprised to see pupils walk on the lawn.

This was such a desecration of the day, but I made no remark.
I was too solemnly impressed by the grandeur of being at Braddock's Field to have hinted that anything could be wrong.