Wild Kitty Part 19

"You must not talk to me any more or I'll get into disgrace," whispered Mary in a low, frightened voice. "Look, Miss Worrick has come into the room. Now do open your history book, there's a dear girl."

Kitty bent her curly head over her book. She was really interested in the cruel fate of the martyr-king, but at that moment she saw nothing but the picture she was conjuring up each moment before her excited imagination--the tall girl asking pardon of the little teacher. Was the girl to go on her knees?

"It really would be better," thought Kitty. "I'd be lower than her then.

It does seem ridiculous that the big should ask pardon of the little, and--Oh, Miss Worrick, I beg your pardon; were you speaking to me?"

"I was, Kitty. Stand up; I am just going to lecture."

The history lesson began. Kitty did no better than yesterday. It came to an end. The mathematical teacher took her cla.s.s, and then the great bell was rung for recess. Just at the moment when its last note echoed through the vast school Miss Worrick came a step forward into the room, and held up her hand to arrest the movement of the cla.s.ses. She looked at Kitty with an expectant expression. Kitty returned her gaze, and said nothing. Kitty Malone felt glued to her seat. For a moment every nerve seemed paralyzed, her face became crimson, her eyes filled with ready tears, she looked down, the great tears splashed upon the desk before her. At that instant she encountered the vindictive and delighted glance of Alice Denvers.

Kitty had confided all her trouble to Alice on the previous night, and Alice at the time had pretended to give a little sympathy; but where was her sympathy now?

"I hate her," thought the Irish girl. "No one else would be glad to see me so miserable."

"You have something to say to me, have you not, Miss Malone?" said Miss Worrick in her stiff, precise voice.

Kitty staggered to her feet.

"I don't want to say it a bit," she grumbled.

"Come forward, my dear; come forward."

Kitty left the protection of her desk, and staggered across the room.

Miss Worrick had mounted a little platform, all the other teachers stood waiting, and the girls waited also. Kitty looked round, the eyes in each face seemed multiplied fourfold--the room seemed to be all eyes. She longed for the mountains, for her father, for Laurie, for the old home.

She hated the school, she hated England. Why was she to be publicly disgraced?

"Oh, it is very wrong indeed to ask me to do it," she cried. Then the following words rushed out: "Miss Worrick, I am sorry I disobeyed you yesterday, and I'll stay in cla.s.s to-day. Yes, I will stay; but I hate every one of you, and I hate England, and I wish I was back again in dear Old Ireland. Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear! Why was I ever sent into this horrid, cold, freezing land? Oh, my heart is broken! my heart is broken!"

Kitty's sobs were distinctly heard across the great schoolroom. She returned to her seat. Miss Worrick with a wave of her hand dismissed the rest of the girls. Kitty bent her head low down upon the desk before her, and sobbed louder and louder. At last she felt a hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

"I know I did it dreadfully, Miss Worrick," she said; "but it was so bad. Why did you make me, why did you make me?"

"There, Kitty, it is over now, and you will never disobey your teacher again as long as you live," said a kind voice, and Kitty raised her eyes to see, not the face of Miss Worrick, but that of the head-mistress.

"Oh, Miss Sherrard, how could you make me do it?" she sobbed. "It wasn't in me. None of the Malones could beg anybody's pardon, and I couldn't go on my knees when the moment came because they felt stiff, they had no joints in them. I could not do it properly; no, I could not."

"You did it, dear, but not very well. You did it, however, and you have learned your lesson. Now come with me into my private sitting-room. You and I will have lunch together, and I will excuse you from any more lessons to-day."

Kitty Malone never forgot that next hour. Miss Sherrard was an ideal head-mistress. She had the keenest sympathy with girls. In her long experience she had met girls of every shade of character, the bold, the ambitious, the timorous, the idle, the frivolous, the n.o.ble, the earnest. She knew all about the Christian girl as well as the pagan girl; all about the girl who had a terrible battle with her own evil pro pensities, and the girl whose nature was so amiable, so gentle, so sweet, that life would be comparatively easy for her. But although she had been head-mistress of the great Middleton School now for several years, she had never before met quite such an extraordinary specimen as Kitty Malone. Where, however, others would see nothing but a spirit of frivolity, a love of admiration, dress, pleasure, in Kitty, Miss Sherrard peeped below the surface and discovered some really n.o.ble qualities. She determined to be very gentle to this wild, willful girl--to take her, in short, as she was.

"Oh, I wonder you care to speak to me," said Kitty, when her sobs having ceased, she stood looking half-repentant, half-rebellious in Miss Sherrard's private room.

"You are not to be the subject of our conversation at all for the present, Kitty," said Miss Sherrard. "Lunch is ready, and you must be hungry. Would you like to go into my room--it is just next to this--and wash your hands and brush out your hair?"

Kitty looked at Miss Sherrard's small and beautifully-kept hands. She was fastidious to a remarkable degree about her personal appearance.

"I dare say my hair is somewhat untidy," she said. "I might as well take a squint at myself in the gla.s.s. I never like to look ugly. Is my nose very red, Miss Sherrard?"

"Never mind about your appearance," said Miss Sherrard, who could not help feeling slightly annoyed at what she considered such a very irrelevant remark.

"I expect I am a fright," said Kitty standing up and talking half to herself and half for the benefit of the head-mistress. "Crying always spoils me. Now, I knew a girl at home, and the more she cried the prettier she got. She used to let her tears roil down her cheeks in great drops, and never attempted to wipe them away, and her nose never got red, and her eyes only got bigger and quite dewy. Now, as to me when I cry, my nose----"

"Kitty, will you please remember that I am waiting for lunch,"

interrupted Miss Sherrard.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, ma'am," answered Kitty. She ran into the next room, examined herself critically in the gla.s.s, arranged her hair, dipped her hands into hot water, and came back looking spruce, bright, pretty, and once more restored to the highest good-humor.

"I said yesterday that I would love you, ma'am," she said, as she seated herself at the other side of the appetizing board. "Oh! what a dear little pie! I wonder is it pigeon pie"

"No, it is lamb pie," answered Miss Sherrard. "Will you help yourself?"

Kitty cut herself a generous slice.

"I like all sorts of good things," she said. "I am sure I was meant to do nothing in life but dress well, and look pretty, and have the nicest food to eat, and----"

"How dare you?" interrupted Miss Sherrard. Her words coming firm and strong, the expression on her kind face arrested the idle girl's silly remarks.

"What do you mean?" asked Kitty.

"I mean this, Miss Malone, that you are a girl with a considerable amount of ability----"

"Oh, now that I have not got."

"With a considerable amount of ability," continued Miss Sherrard, "and with a great many talents."

"Talents! I thought talents meant genius. Now, I have always and always been told that I was a dunce of the dunces. It's not joking me you are, is it, Miss Sherrard?"

"No, Kitty; I am in very sober earnest. You have been sent to me to make something of you."

"Well, my dear woman, I am afraid you won't make much. The fact is, I am wild through and through. I come of a wild stock. I wish you could see us at home, and Laurie, and----"

"You must tell me about your home afterward," said Miss Sherrard. "But now I have something to say about yourself."

As she spoke, Miss Sherrard drew her cup of coffee to the side of the table, leaned back, and looked fixedly into the bright and lovely face of the girl who sat opposite her.

"You have read your Bible, have you not?" she said.

"My Bible!" cried Kitty. "Yes; I read it every day."

"I am glad to hear that."

"Why, you don't suppose we are a lot of heathens at Castle Malone, do you, Miss Sherrard? Father has prayers every morning, and we all troop in, every one of us, into the big hall. Oh, I wish you could see the hall, and the pictures of my ancestors, and----"

"Afterward you shall tell me about them," interrupted Miss Sherrard. "So you do read your Bible every day. Then I dare say you happen to know the beautiful story, or rather parable, spoken by Christ himself about the talents?"

"Yes, I love that story; only I don't think it applies specially to me, for I have not got any."

"Have not you? Perhaps I can find that you have."