Peggy Part 19

"My Veezy-vee!" she cried. "It was my room! V., do you hear? It was our room that horrid wretch was robbing. My dear, if we had been there we should have been murdered in our beds, I know we should. Peggy Montfort has saved our lives. Isn't it perfectly awful?"

"That she should have saved your lives?" asked the Snowy Owl, laughing.

"Come to your senses, Vanity, and don't strangle Peggy. She's black in the face, and I shall have to set about saving her life if you don't let her go."

Released from Viola's embrace, Peggy gasped, and shook herself like a Newfoundland puppy.

"Don't be ridiculous, Vanity!" she said, looking at once pleased and shamefaced. "It wasn't anything, of course; it was just what any one else would have done. But do look out for your things! They are scattered all about the lawn; he threw away a lot of them when he first came out, and we shall be stepping on them if we don't take care. Oh!

oh, please don't say anything more about it. It was just the merest chance I happened to go up." This was to Vivia Varnham, who, trying to overcome her ungraciousness, was expressing her grat.i.tude for what Peggy had done. It was evidently an effort and was not pleasant for either girl.

The girls scattered over the lawn, picking up here a hairpin, there a brooch or buckle. It really seemed as if Vanity Fair was stocked like a jeweller's shop. Gertrude Merryweather, standing by Peggy, uttered an exclamation. "My dear! Peggy! Why, you are all over blood! You are bleeding now. What--where--oh! oh, Fluffy, _look_ here!" Bertha came running, as Gertrude lifted Peggy's arm, which was indeed dripping blood. Both girls exclaimed in horror, and Bertha turned quite white; but Peggy looked at it coolly.

"Oh!" she said. "That must be where I went through the window after him."

"The window?"

"Yes, didn't you hear the crash? He smashed the window in Miss Russell's study and got out, and I followed him, of course. It isn't anything.

Why, I didn't feel it till you spoke."

"That is excitement!" said the Snowy Owl. "You must come in and be bandaged this minute, Peggy! Come right along to the Nest; I have bandages and lint all ready."

The Snowy Owl was all on fire with ardour and sympathy. Peggy looked at her in surprise, but the Fluffy Owl laughed. "You have struck the Snowy's hobby," she said. "She is going to study medicine, you know. Go along; she will be happy all the rest of the day, bandaging and cosseting you."

"But it doesn't hurt!" said Peggy, still wondering.

"Never mind!" said the Snowy Owl. "It ought to hurt, Peggy Montfort, and it will hurt in a little while. Come along and be bandaged!" and, meekly wondering, Peggy went.

CHAPTER XIII.

PEGGY VICTRIX!

"Well, it certainly was a great success!" said the Scapegoat. It was the day after the reception, and she had drifted into the Owls' Nest toward twilight, and now stood by the mantelpiece, swaying backward and forward in the light, wind-blown way she had.

"A great success!" she repeated, thoughtfully. "Why, it was actually pleasant! How did you manage it?"

"We didn't manage it," said honest Bertha. "It just came so. Everybody was ready to have a good time, and had it; that was all."

"More than that!" said Grace, absent-mindedly. "There has to be a knack, or something, and you have it. I haven't. I couldn't do it, even if I wanted to, and I don't think I do."

"Do what?" said the Snowy.

"Be an Owl!" said Grace. Suddenly she left her hold of the shelf, and turned upon them almost fiercely.

"Why should I?" she exclaimed. "Tell me that, will you? It is all natural to you. Your blood flows quietly, and you like quiet, orderly ways, and never want to throw things about, or smash a window. I tell you I have to, sometimes. Look here!"

She caught up a vase from the shelf, and seemed on the point of flinging it through the closed window, but Gertrude laid her hand on her arm firmly. "You may have a right to throw your own things, my dear," she said, good-naturedly. "You have no possible right to throw mine, and 'with all respect, I do object!'"

Grace gave a short laugh, and set the vase down again; but she still looked frowningly at the two girls, and presently she went on.

"It's all very well for you, I tell you. You have a home, and a--my mother died when I was five years old. My father--"

"Grace, dear," said Gertrude; "come and sit down here by me, and tell me about your mother. I have seen her picture; she must have been lovely."

But Grace shook her head fiercely.

"My father is an actor, and I want to be one, too, but he promised my mother before she died--she didn't want me to be one. What do I care about all this stuff we are learning here? I tell you I want to take a tambourine and go on the road with a hand-organ man. That would be life!

I would, too, if I only had the luck to have hair and eyes like yours, Fluffy."

"You could wear a wig, of course," said Bertha, soberly. "The eyes would be a difficulty, though, I'm afraid."

"Well, I am here now! and I'm supposed to stay another year, and then go to college. Four--five years more of bondage, and tasks, and lectures on good behaviour! Am I likely to stand it, I ask you?"

"I hope so!" said Gertrude, steadily. "It would be a thousand pities if you didn't, Grace, and you know it as well as I do."

"And if I do, it must be in my own way!" cried the wild girl, swinging round again on her heel. "And if I can make things more endurable here--if I can get rid of--it must be in my own way, I tell you. Snowy, you are like your name, I suppose. You are white and gold and calm,--I don't know what you are, except that we are not of the same flesh. I tell you, I turn to fire inside! I must break out, I must go off when the fit comes on me. I do no harm! It doesn't hurt anybody for me to go down the wall and cool myself with a run in the fields. Why can't I be let alone? I am not a child! I tell you it is the way I am made!"

The Snowy Owl rose, and, going to the fireplace, laid her arm around Grace's shoulder.

"You are making yourself!" she said. "It's your own life, Wolf; are you making it worse or better?"

"I'm not doing either. I am taking it as it comes, as it was meant to come."

Gertrude shook her head quietly.

"That can't be!" she said. "That is impossible, Wolf. We have to be growing one way or the other; we can't stay as we are, for a year or a day. And there's another thing: you don't seem to think about the others, about the effect on the school. If you are to break the laws, why should not every one do the same?"

"Because they are different!" said Grace, sullenly.

"You don't know that! They may have the same temptations, and be stronger than you to resist them. You ought to be a strong girl, Grace, and, instead of that, you are weak--as weak as water."

"Weak? I!" cried Grace, her eyes blazing. "If any one else had said that to me, Gertrude Merryweather, I would--"

"But no one else would say it to you!" said Gertrude. "Because no one else--except Miss Russell--cares as much as I do--Fluffy and I. We love you too much, Grace, to flatter you and follow you, as most of them do.

I tell you, and you may take it as simple truth, for it is nothing else, that which you think strength is simply weakness,--lamentable weakness.

And as for your influence on the other girls--just listen a moment!"

Taking up a little book from the table, she opened it--indeed it seemed to open of its own accord at the place--and read:

"'Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown Of thee from the hill-top looking down; The heifer that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The s.e.xton, tolling his bell at noon, Deems not that great Napoleon Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbour's creed hath lent.

All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.'"

There was silence when she finished reading. Then--"What is that?" asked Grace, stretching out her hand. "Give it to me!"

"Emerson. Take him home with you, and let him talk to you; he speaks well."