She nodded unhappily.
"Yesterday was Priscilla"s birthday, and she received a box from her aunt. This being Friday night, I gave her permission--"
"Certainly." The Dowager turned to the tragic figure in the center of the floor. "It is Priscilla"s room as much as yours and--"
Keren plunged into a sea of words. The four leaned forward in a strained endeavor to pluck some sense from the torrent.
"They used my bed for a table because it wasn"t against the wall, and Patty tipped a pot of chocolate over in the middle of it. She said it was an accident--but she did it on purpose--I know she did! And because I objected, Priscilla said it wasn"t polite to notice when a guest spilled anything, and she tipped a gla.s.s of current jelly on my pillow, to make Patty feel comfortable. That was the polite thing for a hostess to do, she said; they learned it last year in manner cla.s.s. And the chocolate soaked right through, and Conny Wilder said it was fortunate I was thin, because I could sleep in a curve around it; if it had happened to Irene McCullough, she would have had to sleep in it, because she"s so big she takes up the whole bed. And Priscilla said I could be thankful to-morrow"s Sat.u.r.day when we get clean sheets; it might have happened so that I would have had to sleep in that puddle of chocolate a whole week. And then the "Lights-out" rang, and they left me to clean up, and the housekeeper"s gone to bed, and I can"t get any fresh bed clothes, and I _won"t_ sleep that way! I"m not used to sleeping in chocolaty sheets. I don"t like America and I _hate_ girls."
Tears were dripping from Keren"s cheeks onto the fire-breathing dragons below. The Dowager, without comment, rose and rang the bell.
"Katie," she said, as the maid on duty appeared at the door, "some fresh sheets for Miss Keren, please, and remake her bed. That will do for to-night, Keren. Get to sleep as quickly as possible, and don"t talk.
You mustn"t disturb the other girls. We can see about changing room-mates to-morrow."
Katie and the outraged dragons withdrew.
A silence followed, while Miss Wadsworth and Mademoiselle exchanged glances of despair, and Miss Lord buckled on her war armor.
"You see!" she said, with a suggestion of triumph, "when they get to the point of persecuting a poor little--"
"In my experience of school life," said Mrs. Trent judicially, "it is a girl"s own fault when she is persecuted. Their methods are crude, but to the point. Keren is a hopeless little prig--"
"But at least you can"t allow her to suffer--"
"Oh, no, I shall do what I can toward peace. To-morrow morning, Keren can move in with Irene McCullough, and Patty and Conny and Priscilla go back to their old rooms in the West Wing. You, Mademoiselle, are somewhat inured--"
"I do not mind them together. They are just--what you say?--exhilarating. It is when they are spread out that it is difficult."
"You mean," Miss Lord stared--"that you are going to _reward_ their disgraceful conduct? It is exactly what they have been working for."
"You must acknowledge," smiled the Dowager, "that they have worked hard.
Perseverance deserves success."
The next morning, Patty and Conny and Priscilla, their arms running over with dresses and hats and sofa cushions, gaily two-stepped down the length of "Paradise Alley" while a relieved school a.s.sisted at the flitting. As they caught sight of Miss Lord hovering in the offing, they broke into the chorus of a popular school song:
"We like to go to chapel And listen to the preachers, We are happy in our work, And we dearly love our teachers.
Daughters of Saint Ur-su-la!"
II
The Romantic History of Cuthbert St. John
"The Dowager" had a very sensible theory that boarding-school girls should be kept little girls, until their school life was over, and they stepped out, fresh and eager and spontaneous, to greet the grown-up world. Saint Ursula"s was a cloister, in fact, as in name. The masculine half of the human species was not supposed to count.
Sometimes a new girl was inclined to turn up her nose at the youthful pastimes that contented her companions. But in the end she would be drawn irresistibly into the current. She would learn to jump rope and roll hoops; to partic.i.p.ate in paper chases "cross country; to skate and coast and play hockey on winter afternoons, to enjoy mola.s.ses-candy pulls and popcorn around the big open fire on Sat.u.r.day nights, or impromptu masquerades, when the school raided the trunks in the attic for costumes. After a few weeks" time, the most spoiled little worldling lost her consciousness of calls outside of "bounds," and surrendered to the spirit of the youthful sisterhood.
But the girls in their teens answer readily to the call of ROMANCE. And occasionally, in the twilight hour between afternoon study and the dressing bell, as they gathered in the window-seat with faces to the western sky, the talk would turn to the future--particularly when Rosalie Patton was of the group. Pretty, dainty, inconsequential little Rosalie was preeminently fashioned for romance; it clung to her golden hair and looked from her eyes. She might be extremely hazy as to the difference between participles and supines, she might hesitate on her definition of a parallelopiped, but when the subject under discussion was one of sentiment, she spoke with conviction. For hers was no mere theoretical knowledge; it was gained by personal experience. Rosalie had been proposed to!
She confided the details to her most intimate friends, and they confided them to their most intimate friends, until finally, the whole school knew the entire romantic history.
Rosalie"s preeminence in the field of sentiment was held entirely fitting. Priscilla might excel in basket-ball, Conny Wilder in dramatics, Keren Hersey in geometry and Patty Wyatt in--well, in impudence and audacity--but Rosalie was the recognized authority in matters of the heart; and until Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale came, n.o.body thought of questioning her position.
Mae Mertelle spent an uncomfortable month shaking into place in the school life. The point in which she was accustomed to excel was _clothes_, but when she and her four trunks arrived, she found to her disgust that clothes were not useful at St. Ursula"s. The school uniform reduced all to a dead level in the matter of fashion. There was another field, however, in which she might hope for supremacy. Her own sentimental history was vivid, compared to the colorless lives of most, and she proceeded to a.s.sert her claims.
One Sat.u.r.day evening in October, half-a-dozen girls were gathered in Rosalie"s room, on piled-up sofa cushions, with the gas turned low and the light of the hunter"s moon streaming through the window. They had been singing softly in a minor key, but gradually the singing turned to talk. The talk, in accordance with the moonlight and flying clouds, was in a sentimental vein; and it ended, naturally, with Rosalie"s Great Experience. Between maidenly hesitations and many promptings she retold the story--the new girls had never heard it, and to the old girls it was always new.
The stage setting had been perfect--a moonlit beach, and lapping waves and rustling pine trees. When Rosalie chanced to omit any detail, her hearers, already familiar with the story, eagerly supplied it.
"And he held your hand all the time he was talking," Priscilla prompted.
"Oh, Rosalie! Did he?" in a shocked chorus from the newcomers.
"Y--yes. He just sort of took hold of it and forgot to let go, and I didn"t like to remind him."
"What did he say?"
"He said he couldn"t live without me."
"And what did you say?"
"I said I was awfully sorry, but he"d have to."
"And then what happened?"
"Nothing happened," she was obliged to confess. "I s"pose something might have happened if I"d accepted him, but you see, I didn"t."
"But you were very young at the time," suggested Evalina Smith. "Are you sure you knew your own mind?"
Rosalie nodded with an air of melancholy regret.
"Yes. I knew I couldn"t ever love him, because, he--well, he had an awfully funny nose. It started to point in one direction, and then changed its mind and pointed in the other."
Her hearers would have preferred that she had omitted this detail; but Rosalie was literal-minded and lacked the story-teller"s instinct for suppression.
"He asked if there wasn"t any hope that I would change," she added pensively. "I told him that I could never love him enough to marry him, but that I would always respect him."
"And then what did he say?"
"He said he wouldn"t commit suicide."
A profound hush followed, while Rosalie gazed at the moon and the others gazed at Rosalie. With her gleaming hair and violet eyes, she was entirely their ideal of a storybook heroine. They did not think of envying her; they merely wondered and admired. She was crowned by natural right, Queen of Romance.