Miss Ashton was answered. When she spoke there was tenderness and deep feeling in her voice.
"Will you tell me the truth, Susan?" she said. But Susan did not answer; she only burst into a fit of hysterical sobbing, and after waiting a few moments in vain for it to subside, Miss Ashton added, "You had better go to your room now. I hope you will come soon to me, and tell me the whole truth."
Susan rose slowly, lifting her swollen and discolored face up to Miss Ashton with an entreating look the kind princ.i.p.al found it hard to resist; but she did. She held the door open for Susan to pa.s.s out, and watched her go down the corridor with a troubled heart.
CHAPTER x.x.xV.
FAREWELL WORDS.
There was little difficulty when the time came in deciding the four essays to be chosen. Kate Underwood"s was in most respects the best, and would take the place usually filled by the valedictory. Dorothy Ottley"s was the next strongest, and by far the most thoughtful. To no one"s surprise as much as to her own, Gladys Philbrick"s was the most brilliant, and Edna Grant"s, the best scholar in English literature, the most scholarly.
So the important question was settled a week before commencement, and the young ladies were given their choice, either to read their pieces or to speak them.
Greatly to the surprise of the teachers they all chose to speak them, and the elocution teacher was at once put to drilling them for the occasion.
The choice was pleasantly accepted by the school. Every one of the four were favorites, and whatever disappointment the rejected essayists felt, they kept wisely to themselves.
Susan Downer"s essay on "Truth" was a miserable failure, and a disgraced future was the only one she could see opening before her.
She could not summon courage to make a confession to Miss Ashton; she decided, after hours and hours of troubled and vexatious thought, to be silent, trusting to her speedy removal from the school to silence all further questionings.
Such a busy week as this was now at the academy! The mail brought every day piles of letters to teachers and scholars, which must be answered. Invitations were to be sent. All the preliminaries of a great gathering were to be attended to, and both the excitement and the listlessness attendant on a closing year were to be met and combated.
It would be interesting if we could tell the story of each individual during this eventful period, but it would fill a whole volume by itself, so we must be contented by telling simply of those with whom we have had the most to do.
Miss Ashton tried as far as she could, with so much else to attend to, to have a little personal conversation with every pupil who had been under her care for the year. Sometimes she saw them alone, sometimes she took them in cla.s.ses, according to the importance of what she had to say. Before talking with Marion she sent the following short letter to her mother:--
MY DEAR MRS. PARKE,--I should esteem it a personal favor if you would allow your daughter Marion to remain with me free from expense to you for another year. She has proved in all regards not only an excellent scholar, but, as I wrote you before, the influence of her lovely Christian character has been of great value to me. I shall be glad to do all I can to help her into the influential and well-balanced future I see before her. You need have no fear that a feeling of indebtedness to me will be a burden to her, delicate as her feelings are. I propose, by putting her at the head of my post-office department, to fully repay myself for all she will receive. This will not interfere with her studies or her needed recreation, but will come at hours she can easily spare.
Hoping this will meet with your cordial approbation,
Truly yours, A. S. ASHTON.
It was not until an answer to this had been received that Miss Ashton sent for Marion to come and see her. Marion had in the mean time a letter from her mother, asking if she wished to remain. To which Marion had answered, "Yes! Yes!" So now all Miss Ashton had to do was to tell Marion how satisfied she was both with her and the arrangement, and Marion to tell her kind teacher of her delight in remaining.
Gladys was to return with her father after a pleasant summer spent at Rock Cove, and to her, Miss Ashton had much wise advice to give regarding her future. A motherless child, an indulgent, though wise father, no brothers or sisters, only a crowd of worshipping dependents; probably not to another girl in the whole school was there to come years which would test the character as hers was to be tested.
Excellent advice was given; the question was, Would it be followed?
For Dorothy there was less doubt. Miss Ashton had already found a school for her, where, excellently well-fitted, she could begin in the fall her career as a teacher. Of her success, only Dorothy felt a doubt.
Susan Downer, Miss Ashton had put off seeing until the last, hoping the girl would come herself and confess, if there was anything to confess; but as day after day went by, Susan shunning her when she could, and when she could not, pa.s.sing her with averted face, Miss Ashton saw she must take the matter into her own hands and settle it one way or other; to ignore was to condone it. It was, therefore, only a few days before the close of the term when Susan, who had grown almost buoyant in her hope of escape, found herself summoned to what she was sure was to be her final trial.
"She can"t expel me now," she said to herself triumphantly as she went to the room, "and she can"t withhold my diploma, for that is for scholarship, and I stand well there, so I"m safe at any rate."
Still it was a trembling, pale girl that answered Miss Ashton"s "Come in."
"I do not want you to leave me uncertain both of your truth and honesty," she said gently. "I have been waiting, hoping you would come to me of yourself, but as you have not, I _demand_ now an answer to my question. Did, or did you not write "Storied West Rock"?"
"I d--i--d."
Before she had time to finish the answer, Miss Ashton had said emphatically, "_not_; I know the truth, Susan! I want to spare you the falsehood I see you are about to tell."
"I am not going to ask you where you found the story; I only want you to see, and see so plainly that you can never forget it, how small and mean a thing such a deceit, or any deceit, is, and how sure in the end to turn to the injury of the one who commits it. Of all the cla.s.s that are to leave me, you, Susan Downer, carry away with you my greatest anxiety for your future. G.o.d help and save you, you poor child!"
Miss Ashton"s voice had tears in it as she ceased speaking, and those, more than any words she had spoken, reached and moved the girl before her.
"O Miss Ashton! Miss Ashton!" Susan cried, rushing to her, and throwing both arms around her neck. "Do, _do_, _do_, please forgive me? It was Marion Parke"s book, and I thought no one would ever know.
I"ve been so sorry. I"d have given worlds, worlds, _worlds_, if I had never seen it! O Miss Ashton, what shall I, shall I do?"
"Ask G.o.d to forgive you," Miss Ashton said solemnly. "It is another and a greater judge than I that has the power to do so. If I were only sure," but she did not finish her sentence, she only loosened Susan"s arms gently from around her neck, then said "good-by" to her, and watched her once more as she went away down the corridor.
"And Marion Parke knew it all the time, but would not tell on Susan,"
she said to herself as she turned back into her room. "Marion is a girl to be depended upon, I am glad she is to stay with me."
"Kate Underwood," she said, when Kate"s time came for the farewell counsel, taking both of the girl"s hands in hers, "I"m proud of you.
You have done of late what many older and wiser persons have failed to do,--learned the lesson, which I hope has been learned for your lifetime, that there is no fun in things, however written or spoken, that hurt other"s feelings. I have seen you many times thoughtful and tender, when your face was alive with the ridiculous thing you saw or heard. Kate, I feel so much safer to let you go from me now than I should have six, even three months ago. Tell me, will you try not to forget?"
"I"ll be good as long as I live. I"ll never make fun, no, not even of myself," burst out Kate, "though now I"m dying to get before a mirror and see how I must have looked when you thought me so thoughtful. Was it so, Miss Ashton?" and Kate made up a face which a sterner rebuker than her teacher could not have seen without a smile.
"There"s no use, Kate," she said; "go now, only don"t forget."
And Kate made a sweeping courtesy and disappeared.
With Mamie Smythe she had a long talk, not one word of which did either divulge. In that hour it would be safe to say Mamie learned some life-lessons which it will be hard for her to forget.
And so the time pa.s.sed on. Recitations ceased four days before commencement, and the girls, those even who thought themselves over busy before, found every hour brought a fresh claim upon their time.
"Our bee-hive," Miss Ashton called it, and the girls called her the "queen bee," and made many secret plans about the various gifts they were to give her the last night of the term. The ceremony this year was to be a public one, therefore of great importance.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
WOMEN"S WORK.
The night before commencement Miss Ashton had reserved for the reading of notices of woman"s work and success. This she did at that time, because she wished her pupils to carry away a full belief not only in their own abilities, but also in the position which, with diligence, these abilities would enable them to reach.
The whole school gathered in the hall. Miss Ashton had requested that the notices should be handed in to her a few days previous. Now she said, "Young ladies, I am both surprised and pleased at the readiness and faithfulness with which you have responded to my request. I have here," lifting a pretty, ribbon-tied basket, "at least one hundred different notices! Just think! _one hundred_ instances in which women have tried, and have succeeded in earning not only a respectable, but a successful livelihood. This fact speaks so well for itself, that all remaining for me to do is to read you some of these notices. I must make a selection from among them, and the first one I will read I am sure will interest you:--
""Mlle. Sarmisa Bileesco, the first woman admitted to the bar in France, is said to have taken the highest rank in a cla.s.s of five hundred men at the ecole du Droit, Paris, where she studied after receiving the degree of Bachelor of Letters and Science in Bucharest.
She has begun to practise law in the latter city, where her father is a banker."