Miss Ashton's New Pupil Part 5

Vice-President Kate Underwood gave her head an expressive toss, and, if it hadn't been too dark to see her smile, there might have been seen something more than the toss; for while they talked, the long twilight had faded away, the little ripples of the lake by whose side they were sitting had gone to sleep on its quiet bosom. The air was full of the chirrup of innumerable insects; two frogs, creeping up from the water, adding a sonorous ba.s.s, and the long, slender pine-leaves chimed into this evening lullaby with their sad, sweet, aeolian notes.

But little of all of this did this Demosthenic Club notice as, coming out at length from the darkness of the grove, they saw the sky full of stars, the academy windows blazing with gas-light, and knew study hours had been begun.

Not to be in their rooms punctually at that hour was an infringement upon the "regulations" not easily excused, and to begin the formation of their society by incurring the displeasure of their teachers did not promise well for their future.

"Take off your boots," whispered Mamie Smythe, as they stood hesitating at the door. In a moment every pair of boots was in the girls' hands, and they were creeping softly through the empty corridors toward their respective rooms. As fate would have it, the only one who reached her room was Lilly White. To be sure, Fraulein Sausmann, the German teacher, heard steps in her corridor, and, opening her door a crack, peeped out. When she saw Lilly White creeping along on the toes of her great feet, her boots, like two boats, held one in each hand, she only smiled, and said to herself, "Oh, Fraulein White! She matters not. She studies no times at all,"

and shut her door.

All the others were taken in the very act; and their shoeless feet, their confession of a guilty conscience, were reported to Miss Ashton.

"Seven of the girls! that means a conspiracy of some sort," said this wise teacher. "I must keep an eye upon them."

How much any one of this "Demosthenic Club" suspected of their detection by their corridor teachers it would be difficult to say, for, except by a glance, no notice was taken of them at the time.

Jenny Barton told the others triumphantly at their next secret session, how she had hidden her shoes behind her, and taken little, mincing steps, so to hide her feet, and imitated the whole performance, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the others. "Ah, but!" said Mamie Smythe, "that wasn't half as good as what I did. When I met Miss Stearns pat in the face, and she looked me through and through with those great goggle eyes of hers, I just said, 'O Miss Stearns, I was so thirsty I couldn't study; I had to go and get a drink of ice-water!'

"Then the ugly old thing stared at the boots I had forgotten to hide, as much as to say, 'It was very necessary, in order to go over these uncarpeted floors, to take off your boots, I suppose, Mamie Smythe!'

If she had only said so right out, I should have answered,--

"'Why, Miss Stearns, I did it so not to make a noise;' that's true, isn't it, now?" looking round among the laughing girls.

"And you ought to have added," put in Kate Underwood, "you didn't want to disturb any one in study hours; that was true, wasn't it?"

"Exactly what I would have said; but then, when she only goggle-eyed me, what could a girl do?"

"Do? Why, do what I did," said Lucy Snow. "I walked right up to Miss Palmer, she's so ill-natured, and likes so much to have us all hate her, that you can do anything with her, and I said,--

"'Miss Palmer! I know it's study hours, but I ate too much of that berry shortcake for tea, and I went to find the matron, to see if she couldn't give me something to ease the pain.'

"'I think' said she (the horrid thing), 'if you would put on your boots, it might alleviate the pain; but for fear it should not--you didn't find the matron, I suppose?'

"'No, ma'am,' I said, 'I didn't see her; I had to come away no better than I went.'

"'I am very sorry for you; you appear to be in great pain.'

"I was doubling up like--like a contortionist," and she smiled, and said,--

"'Come into my room, as you can't find the matron, perhaps I can help you.'

"So in I had to go; and, girls, if you can believe it, after fumbling around among her phials, she brought me something in a tumbler. It was half full and looked horrid! I tell you, I shook in my stocking feet, and I began to straighten up, and whimpered,--I could have cried right out, it looked so awful, so _awful_, but I only whimpered,--'I'm better, a good deal, Miss Palmer; I'll go to my room, and if I can't study, I'll go to bed.'

"'You must take this first. I don't like to send you away in such severe pain, particularly as you couldn't find the matron, without doing something to help you. You know I am responsible to your parents for your health!'

"'My parents never give me any medicine,' I snarled, for I was getting ruxy by this time.

"'Perhaps you would have enjoyed better health if they had, and would have been less liable to these sudden attacks of pain,' she said; and, girls, if you can believe it, when I looked up in her face, there she was in a broad grin, holding the tumbler, too, close to my mouth.

"'I'm--I'm lots better,' I whimpered.

"'I'm glad to hear it,' the ugly old thing said; 'but I must insist on your drinking this at once, or I shall have to take you down to Miss Ashton's room; she is more responsible than I am, and I am sure would not pa.s.s any neglect on my part over.'

"By this time the tumbler touched my lips, and, girls, I was so sure that she would take me down to Miss Ashton,--and there is no such thing as keeping anything away from her, for you know how she hates what she calls a 'prevarication,'--that I just had my choice, to drink that nasty stuff, or to betray the Demosthenic Club, or to tell a fib, and have my walking-ticket given me, so I opened my mouth wide, and swallowed one swallow, then was going to turn away my head, but Miss Palmer held the tumbler tight to my lips, as I have seen people do to children when they were giving castor oil. I took another, and tried again, but there was the tumbler tighter still, so down with it I went, and--and--she had no mercy; she made me drain it to the last drop; then she put it on the table, and said,--

"'Now, Lucy, you can go to your room; I think you will feel well enough to study your lesson, but if you do not, come back in a half-hour, and I will give you another, and a stronger dose. Put on your boots before you go; you may take cold on the bare floors, in your condition. Good-night.'

"She opened her door, and held it open in the politest way until I had pa.s.sed out, then I heard her laugh--laugh out loud, a real merry, ringing laugh, every note of which said as plainly as words could,--

"'I've caught you now, old lady. How is the pain? Did the medicine help you?'

"I tell you, girls, it was the hardest pain I ever had in my life, and I never want another."

"Tell us how the medicine tasted," said Lilly White.

"Tasted! why, like rhubarb, castor oil, a.s.safoetida, ginger, mustard, epicac, boneset, paregoric, quinine, a.r.s.enic, rough on rats, and every other hideous medicine in the pharmacopoeia."

"Good enough for you; you oughtn't to have lied," said Martha Dodd, her missionary blood telling for the moment.

But the other girls only laughed; the joke on Lucy was a foretaste of the fun which this club was to inaugurate.

Now, if Miss Palmer did not report to Miss Ashton, and she break up the whole thing, how splendid it would be!

Undaunted, as after a week nothing had been said to them in the way of disapproval, they went on to choose the other members of the club; to appoint times and places for meeting; and to organize in as methodic and high-sounding a manner as their limited experience would allow.

CHAPTER IX.

MISS ASHTON'S ADVICE.

That the formation of such an insignificant thing as this Demosthenic Club should have affected girls like Dorothy Ottley and Marion Parke would have seemed impossible; but it was destined to in ways and times that were beyond their control. When the club was making its selection of members, among those most sought were Marion and Dorothy. Marion, with her cheery, social Western manners, made her way rapidly into one of those favoritisms which are so common in girls' boarding-schools.

She always had a pleasant word for every one, and always was ready to do a kind, generous act. She was so pretty, too, and dressed so simply and neatly, that there was nothing to find fault with, even if the girls had not been, as girls are, in truth, as a cla.s.s, generous, n.o.ble, on the alert to see what is good, rather than what is otherwise, in those with whom they live. As for Dorothy, she was the model girl of the school. The teachers trusted and loved her, so did the pupils. No one among them all said how the sea had browned and almost roughened her plain face; how hard work, anxiety, and poor fare had stunted her growth; how carrying the cross children, too big and too heavy, had given a stoop to her delicate shoulders, and knots on her hands, that told too plainly of burdens they were unable to lift. All that the school saw or thought of was the gentle love that was always in the large gray eyes, the kind words that the firm lips never failed to speak, and the steady, straightforward, honorable life of the best scholar.

"If we can only get those two," said President Jenny Barton, "our club is made."

"They are so good, they'll spoil the fun," said Mamie Smythe.

"For shame!" said Martha Dodd. "You don't suppose the daughter of a missionary would join a club of which good girls could not be members!"

"Or the cousin of so famous a man as Kane, the Arctic explorer," said Sophy Kane.

"Don't dispute, girls; we seem to spend half our time wrangling," and the president knocked, with what she made answer for the speaker's gavel, noisily on the table. "I nominate our vice-president, Miss Underwood, to inform these young ladies of their having been chosen, and to report from them at our next meeting.

"Is the nomination accepted?"

"Ay! ay!" from the club.

In accordance with this request, Kate Underwood had interviewed Marion and Dorothy secretly, and had received from both a positive refusal.