"I am desirous, particularly so, to impress upon you all to-day, as it is the beginning of our longest, hardest, and most important term of the year, the necessity for every one of you individually doing her best as a scholar, as a lady, and, let me add, what I wish I could feel sure you would strive for beyond all other claims, as a Christian. A true Christian is as good a scholar as her natural abilities allow, a lady she must be everywhere, and at every time.
"In closing, I have one request to make of you; you will see, while it does not seem to bear immediately upon what I have been saying, there is a close connection.
"I want to turn your attention specially to women"s work in this nineteenth century. When you learn in a more extended manner than I have been able to give you this morning, what they have done, what they are doing, and what they expect to do, you will realize more fully your share in the life before you.
"In order that you may do this, at some not distant time, we will all meet in the parlor, and I shall expect every one of you to bring to me some account of this work. From two hundred of you, we ought to gather enough to make us not only proud of being women, but ambitious to be among the leaders of our s.e.x."
Then she dismissed the school.
CHAPTER x.x.x.
DECEIT.
Miss Ashton"s talk had an excellent influence upon the school. Even the wealthy girls felt there was something worth living for but society and fashion. A large proportion of the pupils were from families in moderate circ.u.mstances; to them avenues of access to power and influence were opened. To the poor, of whom there were not a few, help in its best sense was offered in ways that faithful diligence would make their own.
In just so far as Miss Ashton had made these two things, faithfulness and diligence, the ground-work of all success, she had given the true character to her school; and as the work of the term began with this demand upon the attention of the pupils, there was a fair prospect of its being the best of the year. The holidays had come and gone. Not a room in the large building but bore evidence of its wealth in Christmas gifts.
New books covered many of the girls" tables, new pictures hung on their walls; chairs, old and faded, blossomed into new life with their head-rests, their pretty pillows and elaborate scarfs; ribbons of all colors decked lounges, tables, curtains; pen-wipers, lay gracefully by the side of elegant ink-stands, perfume bottles stood on _etageres_, while the numbers of hand-painted toilet articles, articles to be used in spreads, bric-a-brac of all kinds and descriptions, it would have been hard to number.
Pretty, tasteful surroundings are as much a part of a girl"s true education as the severer curriculum that is offered to her in her studies, and Miss Ashton gave the influences of these Christmas gifts their full value when she weighed the harder work for the teachers which the vacation always brought.
To be sure, there came a time at the beginning of the term when the unwise parents were responsible for much bad work. Those of their children who had come back with boxes filled with Christmas luxuries--candies, pies, cakes, boxes of preserved fruits, nuts, raisins, and whatever would tempt them to eat out of time and place--had little chance to do well in the recitation-room until these were disposed of.
In truth, even more difficult, more of a hindrance in her school discipline, Miss Ashton often found the parents than their children.
She was sometimes obliged to say, "I could have done something with that girl if her mother had let her alone." One fact had established itself in her experience, that almost every girl committed to her care had, in the home estimation of her character, traits which demanded in their treatment different discipline from that given to any of the others.
She could have employed a secretary with profit, simply to answer letters relating to these prodigies, and nine out of ten proved to be only girls of the most common stamp, both for intellect and character.
Marion had spent her vacation time in a profitable manner. As mathematics was her most difficult study, so she had given her attention almost entirely to it; and even Miss Palmer, who was never good-natured when a pupil was advanced into one of her cla.s.ses, and by so doing made her extra work, was obliged to confess she was now among her best scholars.
Thus encouraged, Marion received an impetus in all her other studies; and, of course, as good scholarship always will, this added to the influence which her sterling moral worth and kindly ways had already given her.
There was one dunce in her mathematical cla.s.s who gave her great annoyance; it was Carrie Smyth, a Southern girl, into whose dull head no figures ever penetrated.
There was something really pitiable as she sat, book in hand, trying to puzzle out the simplest problem, and Marion often helped her, until Miss Palmer prohibited it.
"I will not allow it," she said decidedly. "If Carrie cannot get her own lessons we ought to know it, and to treat her accordingly.
Whatever a.s.sistance she needs, I prefer to give her myself."
Marion obeyed, and Carrie cried, but the consequences followed at once.
Carrie soon learned to copy from Marion"s slate whatever she needed, and, as Marion sat next her in the cla.s.s, this was an easy thing to do; and as Miss Palmer, wisely, seldom asked Carrie any but the simplest questions, well knowing how useless any others would be, she escaped detection until, one day, grown bolder by her escapes, she copied from Marion more openly, Marion seeing her. That this might have happened once, but never would again, Marion felt quite sure; but what was her dismay, when she saw it continue day after day. She was ashamed to let Carrie know of her discovery, as many another n.o.ble girl has been under similar circ.u.mstances, but she knew well that it could not be allowed, and that to pretend ignorance of the fact was wrong.
She moved her seat, but, after staring at her blankly out of her dull eyes, Carrie moved hers to her side, and the cla.s.s all laughed at this demonstration of affection; but Miss Palmer, who had taught long enough to know that it might mean something but affection, watched them. She had not long to do so before she discovered Carrie"s trick, Marion"s knowledge of it, and her embarra.s.sment.
After recitation, she told them to remain, and when they were alone together she said,--
"Marion Parke! how long have you known that Carrie Smyth copied her sums off your slate?"
Poor Marion! She looked at Miss Palmer, then at Carrie; the color came into her face, and the tears into her eyes, but she did not answer a word.
Miss Palmer repeated her question with much asperity. Still no answer, but two large tears on Marion"s cheeks.
"You do not choose to answer me" (a little more gently now): "I shall report your behavior to Miss Ashton. Carrie Smyth, how long have you been copying Marion"s sums, instead of doing your own?"
"I"ve--I"ve never copied them, Miss Palmer," said Carrie, looking Miss Palmer boldly in the face.
"Carrie Smyth, I saw you do so!"
"I--I never did, never, Miss Palmer. _Never!_"
"Go to your room, Carrie Smyth. I am not surprised at your readiness to tell a falsehood; you have been acting one for weeks, and they are all the same, the acted and the spoken, in G.o.d"s sight. Go to your room and pray; ask G.o.d to forgive you."
Then she opened a Bible which lay on a table near her, and in very solemn tones read these words, ""But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers"" (glancing off now in a threatening manner at Carrie), ""and wh.o.r.emongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.""
Carrie turned very pale. If Miss Palmer had asked her for the truth again, she would have told it, but she did not; she only motioned the girls from the room, and went herself to see Miss Ashton.
Incidents similar to this were not unusual in the school, and Miss Ashton always considered them the most painful and troublesome to deal with. She waited a day or two before taking any notice of it, then she sent for Marion, who went to her room with fear and trembling.
"Marion," said Miss Ashton, beckoning to her to come and sit on the sofa beside her, "I am very sorry on your account that this has happened. It would have been better if you had told Miss Palmer as soon as you knew what Carrie was doing; better for her, for of course she was deceiving, and we know what that means; better for Miss Palmer, for she could form no just estimate of Carrie"s scholarship, for which she is responsible; and better for you, because, in a certain way, it made you a partaker in the deception."
"O Miss Ashton! I could not tell on her; I could not, _I could not!_"
exclaimed Marion.
"I understand you perfectly," said wise Miss Ashton; "I only want you to see the situation as it is. If you had thought of it, you might have come to me. Everything of that kind I should know, then your responsibility would have ceased, and, without making a cla.s.s matter of it, I could have influenced Carrie to do right.
"Now, if you fully understand me, run back to your lessons, only remember, in whatever perplexity for the future you find yourself, I am the house mother, and you are all my children; you would not have hesitated to tell your mother if you had found any of your brothers or sisters doing wrong, should you?"
"No, ma"am; I should have gone to her at once."
"And not felt that you were a tell-tale?"
"Not for a moment."
"Just so, then, it is here; we are all one family, and there is nothing mean in reporting to me, more than to a mother. It"s the motive that prompts the telling that gives it its moral character. It is the n.o.blest that can act wisely, and escape the odium of tell-tales; and, my dear Marion, I feel quite sure that for the future I can trust you."
Marion went away with a light heart. "Trust me? of course she can,"
she said to herself; "but I am so sorry for Carrie Smyth."
Carrie, in truth, even after listening to the terrible denunciations Miss Palmer had read to her, was to be pitied for her moral as well as mental dulness. She went through the ordeal of her talk with Miss Ashton with far less feeling than Marion had shown; and the only punishment she minded was being put back into the cla.s.s of beginners, and being told that the next time she was found doing anything of the kind, and told a falsehood about it, she would be expelled from school.