"Nor I," said another girl, "she"s so full of her airs and graces, and always talking about her fine place at Edgewood. Oh dear me! I"m sick of Edgewood!"
A little disagreeable laugh went around.
"Oh, I"ll tell you of the accident," said Polly; "come, let"s sit down on the steps; we"ve ten minutes yet."
"Yes, do, do," cried the girls. So they huddled up together on the big stone steps, Polly in the middle, and she told them the whole story as fast as she could. Meantime other girls hurrying to school, saw them from a distance, and broke into a run to get there in time.
And Polly gave Alexia"s love all round, as she had been commissioned to do.
"We"ll go up to your house to see her," cried Leslie, "perhaps this afternoon."
"Oh, no, you mustn"t," said Polly. "I"m dreadfully sorry, girls, but Papa Fisher says no one must come yet, till he sends word by me."
"I thought you said Alexia was all right."
"And if her arm isn"t broken I should think we might see her," said a big girl on the edge of the circle discontentedly. She had private reasons for wishing the interview as soon as possible, as she and Alexia had quarrelled the day before, and now it was quite best to ignore all differences, and make it up.
"But she"s had a great strain, and Papa-Doctor says it isn"t best,"
repeated Polly very distinctly, "so we can"t even think of it, Sarah."
"Polly? is that Polly Pepper?" exclaimed a voice in the hall.
[Ill.u.s.tration: AND SHE TOLD THEM THE WHOLE STORY AS FAST AS SHE COULD.]
"Oh, yes, Miss Anstice," cried Polly, hopping up so quickly she nearly overthrew some of the bunch of girls.
Yes, she had on the black silk gown, and Polly fancied she could hear it crackle, it was so stiff, as Miss Anstice advanced primly.
"I hear that there was an accident, Polly Pepper, last night, which you and some of the other girls were in. Now, why did you not come and tell me or sister at once about it?"
"Oh dear me! do forgive me," cried poor Polly, now seeing that she had done a very wrong thing not to have acquainted Miss Salisbury first with all the particulars. "I do hope you will forgive me, Miss Anstice," she begged over again.
"I find it very difficult to overlook it, Polly," said Miss Anstice, who was much disturbed by the note she held in her hand, just delivered, by which Professor Mills informed her he should be unable to deliver his address that morning before her art cla.s.s. So she added with asperity, "It would have been quite the proper thing, and something that would naturally, I should suppose, suggest itself to a girl brought up as you have been, Polly, to come at once to the head of the school with the information."
Polly, feeling that all this reflected on Mamsie and her home training, had yet nothing to do but to stand pale and quiet on the steps.
"She couldn"t help it." The big girl pushed her way into the inner circle. "We girls all just made her stop. My! Miss Anstice, it was just a mob here when we saw Polly coming."
"Sarah Miller, you have nothing to say until I address you." A little red spot was coming on either cheek as Miss Anstice turned angrily to the big girl. "And I shall at once report you to sister, for improper behavior."
"Oh dear, dear! Well, I wish "sister" would fire old black silk,"
exclaimed a girl on the edge of the circle under her breath. "Look at her now. Isn"t she a terror!" and then the big bell rang, and they all filed in.
"Now she won"t let us have our picnic; she"ll go against it every way she can," cried a girl who was out of dangerous earshot. And the terror of this spread as they all scampered down the hall.
"Oh dear, dear! to think this should have happened on her black silk day!"
"No, we won"t get it now, you may depend," cried ever so many. And poor Polly, with all this added woe, to make her feel responsible for the horrible beginning of the day, sank into her seat and leaned her head on her desk.
The picnic, celebrated as an annual holiday, was given by Miss Salisbury to the girls, if all had gone well in the school, and no transgressions of rules, or any misdemeanor, marred the term. Miss Anstice never had looked with favor on the inst.i.tution, and the girls always felt that she went out of her way to spy possible insubordination among the scholars.
So they strove not to get out of her good graces, observing special care when the "black silk days" came around.
On this unlucky day, everything seemed against them; and as Miss Anstice stalked off to sit upon the platform by "sister" for the opening exercises, the girls felt it was all up with them, and a general gloom fell upon the long schoolroom.
Miss Salisbury"s gentle face was turned in surprise upon them as she scanned the faces. And then, the general exercises being over, the cla.s.ses were called, and she and "sister" were left on the platform alone.
"Oh, now she"s getting the whole thing!" groaned Leslie, looking back from the hall, to peer in. "Old black silk is giving it to her. Oh, I just hate Miss Anstice!"
"Sarah, why couldn"t you have kept still?" cried another girl. "If you hadn"t spoken, Miss Anstice would have gotten over it."
"Well, I wasn"t going to have Polly Pepper blamed," said Sarah st.u.r.dily.
"If you were willing to, I wasn"t going to stand still and hear it, when it was our fault she told us first."
"Oh, no, Sarah," said Polly, "it surely was my own self that was to blame. I ought to have run in and told Miss Salisbury first. Well, now, girls, what shall I do? I"ve lost that picnic for you all, for I don"t believe she will let us have it now."
"No, she won"t," cried Leslie tragically; "of that you may be sure, Polly Pepper."
VIII "WE"RE TO HAVE OUR PICNIC!"
And that afternoon Polly kept back bad recollections of the gloomy morning at school as well as she could. She didn"t let Alexia get the least bit of a hint about it, although how she ever escaped letting her find it out, she never could quite tell, but rattled on, all the messages the girls had sent, and every bit of school news she could think of.
"Were the other girls who went to Silvia"s, at school?" asked Alexia suddenly, and twitching up her pillow to get higher in bed, for Dr.
Fisher had said she mustn"t get up this first day; and a hard piece of work Mother Fisher had had to keep the aunt out of the room.
"I wouldn"t go in," Mamsie would say; "Dr. Fisher doesn"t wish her to be disturbed. To-morrow, Miss Rhys." And it was all done so quietly that Alexia"s aunt would find herself off down in the library again and busy with a book, very much to her own surprise.
"I"ll shake "em up," Polly cried; and hopping off from the foot of the bed, she thumped the pillows, if not with a merry, at least with a vigorous hand. "There now," crowding them in back of Alexia"s restless head, "isn"t that fine?"
"I should think it was," exclaimed Alexia with a sigh of satisfaction, and giving her long figure a contented stretch; "you do know just the best things to do, Polly Pepper. Well, tell on. I suppose Amy Garrett is perfectly delighted to cut that old art lecture."
"Oh, Professor Mills didn"t come at all," said Polly. That brought it all back about Miss Anstice, and her head drooped suddenly.
"Didn"t come? oh dear!" And Alexia fell to laughing so, that she didn"t notice Polly"s face at all. But her aunt popping in, she became sober at once, and ran her head under the bedclothes.
"Oh, are you worse? is she, Polly?" cried Miss Rhys all in a flutter. "I heard her cry, I thought."
"No, I was laughing," said Alexia, pulling up her face red and shining.
"Do go right away, aunt. Dr. Fisher said Polly was to tell me things."
"Well, if you are not worse," said her aunt, slowly turning away.
"No," said Alexia. "Polly Pepper, do get up and shut that door," she cried; "slam it, and lock it."
"Oh, no," said Polly, in dismay at the very thought, "I couldn"t ever do that, Alexia."