Dori entered the dining room and stopped short.
She had wanted to show the girls at Brookside Finishing School for Young Ladies that living in the West didn’t mean being a barbarian. Instead, she wished she could sink through the floor.
She was the only girl in the room wearing a fancy gown.
The others wore long-sleeved gray dresses with voluminous white pinafores, identical to the school uniforms hanging in Dori’s wardrobe. And the girls were staring at her with open mouths and scornful eyes.
In the pool of silence that followed Dori’s grand entrance, Miss Mix’s warning flashed into her mind. Pride did go before destruction, and mighty was the fall of Dori’s haughty spirit.
“Miss Sterling, you are late,” Miss Brookings snapped from her place at the head table. Triumph dripped from every word. “If you hadn’t wasted time decking yourself out as if you were going to a fancy dress ball”—she cast a disparaging look at Dori’s shawl—“or a costume ball, you wouldn’t be tardy.”
Titters ran through the room.
Humiliated but undefeated, Dori refused to take the Babbling Brook’s belittling comment meekly. She quelled the roomful of giggling girls with a lightning glance, turned to the headmistress, and put on her most injured expression. “Why, Miss Brookings, I took for granted that since this is Boston, proper etiquette required me to dress for dinner. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, right?”
The headmistress’s face reddened. “This is not Rome. Our young ladies only wear such garments on special occasions.” She pointed to an empty chair at a nearby table where seven girls sat staring. “Take your place.”
Inwardly seething, Dori obeyed. She bowed her head while Miss Brookings mumbled a boring blessing. What good was it to win the first skirmish? Dozens of hard battles lay ahead, and what chance did she have of winning the war? A quick survey of the girls around her in their regulation uniforms left Dori unimpressed. Not one looked like she had enough spunk to say boo to a goose.
After introducing themselves, the girls ignored Dori until one smirking brunette spoke up. “You’re the girl who stole Gretchen van Dyke’s room, aren’t you?”
Dori felt hot color spring to her cheeks. “I have the room my brother paid for.”
“Gretchen won’t like it,” Harriet sneered. “Neither will her father.”
Dori resisted the temptation to blurt out that Gretchen and her father could go hang. Instead, she daintily raised one shoulder and met Harriet’s unfriendly gaze head-on. “The room is mine now.” She smiled sweetly. “Perhaps Miss van Dyke can room with you. If you like, I’ll speak to Miss Brookings about it.”
Harriet choked, gulped water from her crystal goblet, and retorted, “We’ll see about that.” Her eyes smoldered.
Appetite gone, Dori choked down what was put before her, but only for the sake of appearance. She’d eat dirt before letting this pack of snobs see how upset she was. When Miss Brookings dismissed them, Dori fled as if pursued by ravening wolves.
Back in the coveted room, the ivy-covered academy walls that had looked so picturesque in the advertisement closed in on Dori. She slowly removed the white dress, its charm besmirched by the unpleasant Miss Brookings and her flock of simpering sheep. She hung it at the back of the wardrobe and donned the drab uniform. It changed her from a cattle rancher’s sister into one of the sheep. Dori shuddered. She, a sheep? Never—unless it were a black sheep.
Footsteps followed by low voices sounded outside Dori’s door. Ears made keen from the need to be alert while riding the range, she tiptoed to the door and opened it a crack. The hall was dimly lit, but Dori recognized the girl who had questioned her at the table, huddled in a circle with two other girls.
“Just who is this Dolores Sterling, anyway?” Harriet challenged.
“She’s no lady in spite of her fancy clothes and airs,” a second girl said.
“That’s right,” the third agreed. “Look how tan she is. Ladies are known by how white their skin is.” A quickly stifled giggle sounded.
“She looks Mexican to me. Besides, Dolores is a Spanish name, isn’t it?” Harriet’s tone was so spiteful it set Dori afire with anger. “So what is she doing at Brookside? My parents didn’t send me here to hobnob with foreigners. And,” she added, “whatever are the van Dykes going to say?”
Dori threw caution to the winds and flung the door wide open. “The van Dykes can go hang.” Hands on her hips, a cauldron of hot words trembled just behind her tongue, threatening to burst out and scorch her adversaries. “I am not—” A daring thought halted her denial. She scornfully raised her head. There wasn’t a drop of Spanish blood in her, but why not capitalize on her name and her ink-black hair?
“My name is Dolores Sterling. I am not a foreigner. However, you may call me the Spanish senorita—and the last thing I intend to do is to hobnob, as you so inelegantly put it, with either you or the van Dykes.” Ignoring the collective gasp that followed her bold announcement, Dori turned on her heel and marched back into her room. She slammed the door with a resounding thud, rejoicing over the shocked faces she’d left staring at her, but also feeling guilty.
I didn’t say I was Spanish, God, she said, salving her conscience. Only that they could call me senorita. Besides, what if I were Spanish? Solita and my Mexican friends are worth far more than this bunch of East Coast ninnies. What am I doing here, anyway?
In the days that followed, Dori asked herself the same question over and over. She hated the regimentation and ached for wide open spaces. She despised the gray dresses and white pinafores Miss Brookings’s “young ladies” were forced to wear. “Life is worse than the stories Captain Perry Mace used to tell about the discipline of military life,” she often told herself.
Too proud to admit defeat and go home like a frightened calf bawling for its mother, Dori decided to seek revenge. One look at Miss Used-to-Having-Her-Own-Way van Dyke, on whom Miss Brookings openly fawned, and Dori determined to oust “dear Gretchen” from first place in the academic standings. Thanks to an excellent teacher in Madera and Matt’s insistence that his sister always do her best, Dori was well prepared to carry out her plan.
The first marking period established a running competition between the girls. Dori edged Gretchen into second place in every class except deportment.
“Why should I be penalized for breaking rules that make no sense?” Dori complained to Scraggs. “Why am I forbidden to climb out my window and down the ivy on starlit nights? I hate being cooped up, and I’m not hurting anyone.” She scowled. “Janey overheard Gretchen—the sneak—report me. Tale bearing is far worse than what I do.”
Scraggs looked sympathetic. “It is to you…or to me,” he whispered, “but what we think doesn’t count. Gossip has it that Miss Gretchen is Miss Brookings’s pet student. She hasn’t forgiven you for being in ‘her’ room, you know. I hear things.” His smile made Dori wonder why she had ever considered him gloomy.
Scraggs glanced around the hall as if fearful of being overheard. “Mr. van Dyke’s coffers are very well filled, you know.” He patted Dori’s shoulder. “Don’t fret about it. I understand your…uh…pranks are winning admiration from some of the other young ladies.” His posture remained as rigid as ever, but a telltale gleam in his pale eyes betrayed his approval. “Of course, Misses Brookings and van Dyke can’t have that.”
Dori felt a bit better until she was called on the carpet again the next day.
The Babbling Brook wore her wrinkled-prune face. “Why must you be so impertinent?” she demanded. “Miss Allison says you openly challenged her authority.”
Dori’s lips tightened. “Anyone who states that ‘the wild West is filled with uncouth persons and is not a fit place to live’ needs challenging. Besides, I only quoted Exodus 20:16: ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.’ I could have said that westerners are at least polite enough to keep quiet about people and places they have never seen and know absolutely nothing about.”
The woman’s face turned purple. “What do you mean?”
Dori clenched her hands into fists. “Yesterday Miss Allison said I was fortunate to have escaped the Indian massacres by coming here. I had to set her straight. It’s been years since any California Indians went on the warpath.”
The headmistress made a strangling sound and waved toward the door. “You may go, but if you feel the need to correct an instructor from now on, do it privately and respectfully.”
“I was respectful.” Resentment shot through Dori. “I thought Brookside Finishing School for Young Ladies wanted its students to know the truth, not lies. It says so right in our list of rules. ‘The Bible is the great rule of duty for both teachers and scholars. Truth and virtue, Christian kindness and courtesy will be the governing principle of conduct to all the members of this school.’ Am I wrong? Or don’t the teachers practice what the rule preaches?”
“Go!” Miss Brookings thundered.
Dori flounced out—and received another failing mark in deportment.