Druscilla Paton, known as Dinty to her friends and family, longs to attend Danby Hall, a private girls' school nearby, rather than her local public high school, Laurel High. Convinced that her life will be more glamorous at Danby, and eager to get to know her idol, Juliet Moore, Dinty accepts help from her estranged Uncle Hiram, much to the displeasure of the four elder sisters raising her. Carrying her point, after some unpleasantness, Dinty does indeed enroll at Danby, but over the course of the following year, she discovers that it isn't quite what she expected it to be. Ashamed of the fact that she has to wait tables at school, and eager to become friends with the wealthy Juliet and her set, Dinty is blind to a number of important facts, from the significant flaws displayed by Juliet, to the ever-more-objectionable behavior into which she herself is led, by her desire to belong. She fails, moreover, to properly take advantage of the opportunities offered to her, perhaps because those opportunities - sports teams, academics, school service - aren't really what led her to Danby in the first place. It is only slowly, through the friendship of school oddball Petra Warren, and the influence of her loving home circle, that Dinty realizes what she is giving up: the better values of true friendship and love, as opposed to the showier ideas of status and privilege...

The second school-story I have read from author Jane (D.) Abbott, following upon her 1920 Highacres, A Row of Stars (published in 1937) offers a less glowing depiction of school life than that earlier book, and features a far less winsome heroine. There were many moments, while reading the story, that I was thoroughly exasperated with the selfish and often times oblivious Dinty, who regularly disregards the feelings of her sisters, her childhood friend Beth Wheeler, and her new friend Petra Warren, because of her infatuation with the shallow Juliet. No doubt this is a more realistic portrait of girlhood than that seen in some of Abbott's other tales - girls can't all be selfless, universally kind and forgiving, and full of a certain joie de vivre - but it didn't make for an especially pleasant read. That said, it was interesting to watch the slow process by which Dinty came to a better understanding of herself and what she truly wanted, and to see Abbott exploring some of those concerns about class and snobbery that so distinguish her work. Many of the little period details - the Paton sisters go to listen to poet Robert Frost at the public library! - were charming, although some of the content - the thoroughly anti-Semitic depiction of the book-dealer who cheats Dinty, for instance - was dated in a far less pleasant manner. The artwork here, done by Ruth King, who also illustrated two vintage series I have enjoyed - Debbie Jones by Laura Cooper Rendina and The Graper Girls by Elizabeth Corbett - was quite appealing. Recommended to readers interested in vintage American girls' school stories, where the school experience depicted is not particularly positive. ( )