‘Who could have written the note?’ asked Clover again and again. It was impossible to guess. It seemed absurd to suspect any of the older girls; but then, as Rose suggested, the absurdity as well as the signature might have been imitated to avoid detection.
‘I know one thing,’ remarked Rose, ‘and that is that I should like to kill Mrs Searles. Horrid old thing! – peeping and prying into pockets. She has no business to be alive at all.’
Rose's ferocious speeches always sounded specially comical when taken in connection with her pink cheeks and her dimples.
‘Shall you write to papa tonight, Katy?’ asked Clover.
Katy shook her head. She was too heavy-hearted to talk. Big tears rolled down unseen and fell upon the pillow. After Rose was gone, and the candle out, she cried herself to sleep.
Waking early in the dim dawn, she lay and thought it over, Clover slumbering soundly beside her meanwhile. ‘Morning brings counsel,’ says the old proverb. In this case it seemed true. Katy, to her surprise, found a train of fresh thoughts filling her mind, which were not there when she fell asleep. She recalled her passionate words and feelings of the day before. Now that the mood had passed, they seemed to her worse than the injury which provoked them. Quick-tempered and generous people often experience this. It was easier for Katy to forgive Mrs Florence, because it was needful also that she should forgive herself.
‘I said I would write to papa to take us away,’ she thought. ‘Why did I say that? What good would it do? It wouldn't make anybody disbelieve this horrid story. They'd only think I wanted to get away because I was found out. And papa would be so worried and disappointed. It has cost him a great deal to get us ready and send us here, and he wants us to stay a year. If we went home now, all the money would be wasted. And yet how horrid it is going to be after this! I don't feel as if I could ever bear to see Mrs Florence again. I must write.
‘But then,’ her thoughts flowed on, ‘home wouldn't seem like home if we went away from school in disgrace, and knew that everybody here was believing such things. Suppose, instead, I were to write to papa to come on and make things straight. He'd find out the truth, and force Mrs Florence to see it. It would be very expensive, though; and I know he oughtn't to leave home again so soon. Oh, dear! How hard it is to know what to do!
‘What would Cousin Helen say?’ she continued, going in imagination to the sofa-side of the dear friend who was to her like a second conscience. She shut her eyes and invented a long talk – her questions, Cousin Helen's replies. But, as everybody knows, it is impossible to play croquet by yourself and be strictly impartial to all the four balls. Katy found that she was making Cousin Helen play (that is, answer) as she herself wished, and not, as something whispered, she would answer were she really there.
‘It is just the “Little Scholar” over again,’ she said, half aloud, ‘I can't see. I don't know how to act.’ She remembered the dream she once had, of a great beautiful face and a helping hand. ‘And it was real,’ she murmured, ‘and just as real, and just as near, now as then.’
The result of this long meditation was that, when Clover woke up, she found Katy leaning over, ready to kiss her for good morning, and looking bright and determined.
‘Clovy,’ she said, ‘I've been thinking; and I'm not going to write to papa about this affair at all!’
‘Are you not? Why not?’ asked Clover, puzzled.
‘Because it would worry him, and be of no use. He would come and take us right away, I'm sure; but Mrs Florence and all the teachers, and a great many of the girls, would always believe that this horrid, ridiculous story is true. I can't bear to have them. Let's stay, instead, and convince them that it isn't. I think we can.’
‘I would a great deal rather go home,’ said Clover. ‘It won't ever be nice here again. We shall have this nasty room, and Miss Jane will be more horrid than ever, and the girls will think you wrote that note, and Lilly Page will say hateful things!’ She buttoned her boots with a vindictive air.
‘Never mind,’ said Katy, trying to feel brave. ‘I don't suppose it will be pleasant, but I'm pretty sure it's right. And Rosy and all the girls we really care for know how it is.’
‘I can't bear it,’ sighed Clover, with tears in her eyes. ‘It is so cruel that they should say things about you.’
‘I mean that they shall say something quite different before we go away,’ replied Katy, stroking her hair. ‘Cousin Helen would tell us to stay, I'm pretty sure. I was thinking about her just now, and I seemed to hear her voice in the air, saying over and over, “Live it down! Live it down! Live it down!”’ She half sang this, and took two or three dancing steps across the room.
‘What a girl you are!’ said Clover, consoled by seeing Katy look so bright.
Mrs Florence was surprised that morning, as she sat in her room, by the appearance of Katy. She looked pale, but perfectly quiet and gentle.
‘Mrs Florence,’ she said, ‘I've come to say that I shall not write to my father to take us away, as I told you I should.’
Mrs Florence bowed stiffly, by way of answer.
‘Not,’ went on Katy, with a little flash in her eyes, ‘that he would hesitate, or doubt my word one moment, if I did. But he wished us to stay here a year, and I don't wish to disappoint him. I'd rather stay. And, Mrs Florence, I'm sorry I spoke as I did yesterday. It was not right; but I was angry, and felt that you were unjust.’
‘And today you own that I was not?’
‘Oh, no!’ replied Katy, ‘I can't do that. You were unjust, because neither Clover nor I wrote that note. We would not do such a horrid thing for the world, and I hope some day you will believe us. But I ought not to have spoken so.’
Katy's face and voice were so truthful as she said this, that Mrs Florence was almost shaken in her opinion.
‘We will say no more about the matter,’ she remarked in a kinder tone. ‘If your conduct is perfectly correct in future, it will go far to make this forgotten.’
Few things are more aggravating than to be forgiven when one has done no wrong. Katy felt this as she walked away from Mrs Florence's room. But she would not let herself grow angry again. ‘Live it down!’ she whispered, as she went into the school-room.
She and Clover had a good deal to endure for the next two or three weeks. They missed their old room with its sunny window and pleasant outlook. They missed Rose, who, down at the far end of Quaker Row, could not drop in half so often as had been her custom. Miss Jane was specially grim and sharp; and some of the upstairs girls, who resented Katy's plain speaking, and the formation of a society against flirting, improved the chance to be provoking. Lilly Page was one of these. She didn't really believe Katy guilty, but she liked to tease her by pretending to believe it.
‘Only to think of the President of the Saintly Stuck-up Society being caught like this!’ she remarked, maliciously. ‘What are our great reformers coming to? Now if it had been a sinner like me, no one would be surprised!’
All this naturally was vexatious. Even sunny Clover shed many tears in private over her mortifications. But the girls bore their trouble bravely, and never said one syllable about the matter in the letters home. There were consolations, too, mixed with the annoyances. Rose Red clung to her two friends closely, and loyally fought their battles. The S.S.U.C. to a girl rallied round its chief. After that sad Saturday the meetings were resumed with as much spirit as ever. Katy's steadiness and uniform politeness and sweet temper impressed even those who would have been glad to believe a tale against her, and in a short time the affair ceased to be a subject for discussion, was almost forgotten, in fact, except for a sore spot in Katy's heart, and one page in Rose Red's album, upon which, under the date of that fatal day, were written these words, headed by an appalling skull and cross-bones in pen-and-ink:
‘N.B. – Pay Miss Jane off.’
8
CHANGES
‘Clover, where's Clover?’ cried Rose Red, popping her head into the school-room, where Katy sat wr
iting her composition. ‘Oh, Katy! there you are. I want you too. Come down to my room right away. I've such a thing to tell you.’
‘What is it? Tell me too!’ said Bella Arkwright. Bella was a veritable ‘little pitcher’, of the kind mentioned in the Proverb, and had an insatiable curiosity to know everything that other people knew.
‘Tell you, miss? I should really like to know why!’ replied Rose, who was not at all fond of Bella.
‘You're real mean, and real unkind,’ whined Bella. ‘You think you're a great grown-up lady, and can have secrets. But you ain't! You're a little girl too – most as little as me. So there!’
Rose made a face at her, and a sort of growling rush, which had the effect of sending Bella screaming down the hall. Then, returning to the school-room –
‘Do come, Katy,’ she said; ‘find Clover, and hurry! Really and truly I want you. I feel as if I should burst if I don't tell somebody right away what I've found out.’
Katy began to be curious. She went in pursuit of Clover, who was practising in one of the recitation-rooms, and the three girls ran together down Quaker Row.
‘Now,’ said Rose, locking the door, and pushing forward a chair for Katy and another for Clover, ‘swear that you won't tell, for this is a real secret – the greatest secret that ever was, and Mrs Florence would flay me alive if she knew that I knew!’ She paused to enjoy the effect of her words, and suddenly began to snuff the air in a peculiar manner.
‘Girls,’ she said, solemnly, ‘that little wretch of a Bella is in this room. I am sure of it.’
‘What makes you think so?’ cried the others, surprised.
‘I smell that dreadful pomatum that she puts on her hair! Don't you notice it? She's hidden somewhere.’ Rose looked sharply about for a minute, then made a pounce, and from under the bed dragged a small kicking heap. It was the guilty Bella.
‘What were you doing there, you bad child?’ demanded Rose, seizing the kicking feet and holding them fast.
‘I don't care,’ blubbered Bella, ‘you wouldn't tell me your secret. You're a real horrid girl, Rose Red. I don't love you a bit.’
‘Your affection is not a thing which I particularly pine for,’ retorted Rose, seating herself, and holding the culprit before her by the ends of her short pig-tails. ‘I don't want little girls who peep and hide to love me. I'd rather they wouldn't. Now listen. Do you know what I shall do if you ever come again into my room without leave? First, I shall cut off your hair, pomatum and all, with my pen-knife' – Bella screamed – ‘and then I'll turn myself into a bear – a great brown bear – and eat you up!’ Rose pronounced this threat with tremendous energy, and accompanied it with a snarl which showed all her teeth. Bella roared with fright, twitched away her pig-tails, unlocked the door and fled, Rose not pursuing her, but sitting comfortably in her chair and growling at intervals, till her victim was out of hearing. Then she rose and bolted the door again.
‘How lucky that the imp is so fond of that smelly pomatum!’ she remarked; ‘one always knows where to look for her. It's as good as a bell round her neck! Now for the secret. You promise not to tell? Well, then, Mrs Florence is going away week after next, and, what's more – she's going to be married!’
‘Not really!’ cried the others.
‘Really and truly. She's going to be married to a clergyman.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Why, it's the most curious thing. You know my blue lawn, which Miss James is making? This morning I went to try it on, Miss Barnes with me of course, and while Miss James was fitting the waist Mrs Seccomb came in and sat down on the sofa by Miss Barnes. They began to talk, and pretty soon Mrs Seccomb said, “What day does Mrs Florence go?”
‘“Thursday week,” said Miss Barnes. She sort of mumbled it, and looked to see if I were listening. I wasn't; but of course after that I did – as hard as I could.
‘ “And where does the important event take place?” asked Mrs Seccomb. She's so funny with her little bit of a mouth and her long words. She always looks as if each of them was a big pill, and she wanted to swallow it and couldn't.
‘ “In Lewisberg, at her sister's house,” said Miss Barnes. She mumbled more than ever, but I heard.
‘“What a deplorable loss she will be to our limited circle!” said Mrs Seccomb. I couldn't imagine what they meant. But don't you think, when I got home there was this letter from Sylvia, and she says, “Your adored Mrs Florence is going to be married. I'm afraid you'll all break your hearts about it. Mother met the gentleman at a party the other night. She says he looks clever, but isn't at all handsome, which is a pity, for Mrs Florence is a raving beauty in my opinion. He's an excellent preacher, we hear; and won't she manage the parish to perfection? How shall you like being left to the tender mercies of Mrs Nipson?” Now did you ever hear anything so droll in your life?’ went on Rose, folding up her letter. ‘Just think of those two things coming together the same day! It's like a sum in arithmetic, with an answer which “proves” the sum, isn't it?’
Rose had counted on producing an effect, and she certainly was not disappointed. The girls could think and talk of nothing else for the remainder of that afternoon.
It was a singular fact that before two days were over, every scholar in the school knew that Mrs Florence was going to be married! How the secret got out nobody could guess. Rose protested that it wasn't her fault – she had been a miracle of discretion, a perfect sphinx; but there was a guilty laugh in her eyes, and Katy suspected that the sphinx had unbent a little. Nothing so exciting had ever happened at the Nunnery before. Some of the older scholars were quite inconsolable. They bemoaned themselves, and got together in corners to enjoy the luxury of woe. Nothing comforted them but the project of getting up a ‘testimonial' for Mrs Florence.
What this testimonial should be caused great discussion in the school. Everybody had a different idea, and everybody was sure that her idea was better than anybody else's. All the school contributed. The money collected amounted to nearly forty dollars, and the question was, what should be bought?
Every sort of thing was proposed. Lilly Page insisted that nothing could possibly be so appropriate as a bouquet of wax flowers and a glass shade to put over it. There was a strong party in favour of spoons. Annie Silsbie suggested ‘a statue’; somebody else a clock. Rose Red was for a cabinet piano, and Katy had some trouble in convincing her that forty dollars would not buy one. Bella demanded that they should get ‘an organ’.
‘You can go along with it as monkey,' said Rose, which remark made Bella caper with indignation.
At last, after long discussion and some quarrelling, a cake-basket was fixed upon. Sylvia Redding happened to be making a visit in Boston, and Rose was commissioned to write and ask her to select the gift and send it up by express. The girls could hardly wait.
‘I do hope it will be pretty, don't you?’ they said over and over again.
When the box arrived, they all gathered to see it opened. Esther Dearborn took out the nails, half-a-dozen hands lifted the lid, and Rose unwrapped the tissue-paper and displayed the basket up to general view.
‘Oh, what a beauty!’ cried everybody.
It was woven of twisted silver wire. Two figures of children with wings and garlands supported the handle on either side. In the middle of the handle were a pair of silver doves, billing and cooing in the most affectionate way, over a tiny shield, on which were engraved Mrs Florence's initials.
‘I never saw one like it!’ ‘Doesn't it look heavy?’ ‘Rose Red, your sister is splendid!’ cried a chorus of voices, as Rose, highly gratified, held up the basket.
‘Who shall present it?’ asked Louisa Agnew. ‘Rose Red,’ said some of the girls.
‘No, indeed, I'm not tall enough,’ protested Rose, ‘it must be somebody who'd kind of sweep into the room and be impressive. I vote for Katy.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Katy, shrinking back, ‘I shouldn't do it well at all. Suppose we put it to vote?’
Ellen G
ray cut some slips of paper, and each girl wrote a name and dropped it into a box. When the votes were counted, Katy's name appeared on all but three.
‘I propose that we make this vote unanimous,’ said Rose, highly delighted.
The girls agreed; and Rose, jumping on a chair, exclaimed –
‘Three cheers for Katy Carr! Keep time, girls, – one, two, hip, hip, hurrah!’
The hurrahs were given with enthusiasm, for Katy, almost without knowing it, had become popular. She was too much touched to speak at first. When she did, it was to protest against her election.
‘Esther would do it beautifully,’ she said, ‘and I think Mrs Florence would like the basket better if she gave it. You know ever since –’ She stopped. Even now she could not refer with composure to the affair of the note.
‘Oh,’ cried Louisa, ‘she's thinking of that ridiculous note Mrs Florence made such a fuss about. As if anybody supposed you wrote it, Katy! I don't believe even Miss Jane is such a goose as that. Anyway, if she is, that's one reason more why you should present the basket, to show that we don't think so.’ She gave Katy a kiss by way of period.
‘Yes, indeed, you're chosen, and you must give it,’ cried the others.
‘Very well,’ said Katy, extremely gratified, ‘what am I to say?’
‘We'll compose a speech for you,’ replied Rose. ‘Sugar your voice, Katy, and, whatever you do, stand up straight. Don't crook over, as if you thought you were tall. It's a bad trick you have, child, and I'm always sorry to see it,’ concluded Rose, with the air of a wise mamma giving a lecture.
It is droll how much can go on in a school unseen and unsuspected by its teachers. Mrs Florence never dreamed that the girls had guessed her secret. Her plan was to go away as if for a visit, and leave Mrs Nipson to explain at her leisure. She was therefore quite unprepared for the appearance of Katy holding the beautiful basket, which was full of fresh roses, crimson, white, and pink. I am afraid the rules of the S.S.U.C. had been slightly relaxed to allow of Rose Red's getting these flowers; certainly they grew nowhere in Hillsover except in Professor Sec-comb's garden.
What Katy Did at School Page 9
