Katherine, who had not left her seat, laughed nervously. She stood in great awe of the princ.i.p.al, and she did not in the least wish to laugh.
Mrs. Graham looked at her sternly, "One mark in deportment, Katherine, and three to those who left their desks, and you will all spend your recess indoors. Belle, I will see you in the office."
Belle followed Mrs. Graham, with her head held high, her lips pursed up saucily, her black eyes snapping. Katherine, through her own tear-filled ones, watched her in astonishment.
When Belle returned study hour was over, and the culprits who were condemned to stay indoors had grouped themselves beside the window.
"What did she do to you, Belle?" they cried.
"Nothing,--just talked. She said it was wasting time and chalk, and that it wasn"t honest. Such a fuss about a little chalk!"
Celia Fair, who had her hat on, ready to go home, came behind Belle, and with a hand on either side of her face she lifted it till the saucy eyes looked into her own. "Does that make any difference, really--because it is just chalk?" she asked.
Belle wriggled out of her hands, only to clasp her around the waist. "I wouldn"t take your chalk," she said, laughing.
"I don"t know what to think of you to-day," Miss Fair continued, looking around the group. "I am afraid Mrs. Graham will not trust me to keep study hour after this."
There was a general cry of, "Oh, Miss Celia, why not?"
"Do you think she can have a high opinion of my ability to keep order?"
"But no one else could do any better."
"If Mrs. Graham had been here, you would not have rushed to the window, I know very well."
"But we are so much fonder of you, Miss Celia," urged Charlotte.
"If that is the case I"d like you to show it by behaving," said Celia, as she left the room.
When Belle told at home about the day"s occurrences, her father laughed.
"I shall tell Mrs. Graham she must introduce manual training. "Satan finds some mischief still," you see. Maybe Belle will turn out a famous sculptor."
"At any rate, colonel, you ought not to encourage her in such pranks,"
Mrs. Parton remarked, shaking her head at her husband, who never saw anything to criticise in the one little daughter among his five boys.
CHAPTER FIFTH.
MAURICE.
"The stubbornness of fortune."
It was the first of the month, and a steady stream of people pa.s.sed in and out of the bank. Maurice sat on the steps leading up to the private entrance, and with few exceptions each new-comer had a pleasant greeting or kindly inquiry for him.
Miss Betty Bishop rustling out, bank book in hand, called, "How are you, Maurice? When are you and Katherine coming to take tea with me? Let me know and I"ll have waffles."
The cabinet-maker came to the foot of the steps to ask about the lame knee, and shook his head in sympathy with Maurice"s doleful face.
Colonel Parton, a tall, gray-mustached man, accompanied by two hunting dogs, hailed him: "Not going with the boys? Ah, I forgot your knee. Too bad! Jack"s got the dandiest new fishing-rod you ever saw."
"As if I didn"t know it," growled Maurice, us the colonel entered the bank.
The next person to accost him was Miss Celia Fair. She hadn"t any bank business, but seeing Maurice as she pa.s.sed, stopped to speak to him. She sat down beside him and tried in her pretty, soft way to cheer him.
"Don"t look so gloomy, dear; you know if you are careful you will soon be all right again," she said.
At this Maurice poured forth all his disappointment at not being able to go with the Parton boys on their excursion down the bay.
"I am just as sorry for you as I can be," said Celia, clasping her hands in her lap--such slender hands--and looking far away as if she were tired of everything near by. It was only for a moment, then she said with a little laugh, "You can"t possibly understand, Maurice, but I shouldn"t mind a sprained knee in the least; I think I could even enjoy it, if I hadn"t any more responsibility than you have."
"But you don"t care to go fishing," he suggested.
"Oh, yes, I do; I like to fish." With a smile she said good-by, and went away.
After this Maurice settled down into deeper despondency than before. He had refused an invitation to drive, hid treated with bitter scorn Katherine"s suggestion that he might like to go out to the creek with her and Blossom. "You could ride in the stage, you know, and have to walk only the least little bit," she said.
"Thank you; it is _such_ fun to throw stones in the water," he replied, with elaborate politeness.
That Maurice was badly spoiled was no secret. The only boy in the family, with bright, engaging ways when things went to please him, he had been petted and humored by his parents, given up to by Katherine, and treated as a leader by his boy friends, until he had come to look upon his own pleasure as the most important thing in the universe. Not that he realized this. He would have been greatly surprised to hear he was selfish.
The accident by which his knee had been sprained severely was an experience as trying as it was new to him. At first the petting he received at home, and the attentions of his friends, added to his sense of importance and made it endurable, but this could not continue indefinitely. Ball playing and other sports must go on, and Maurice, to his aggrieved surprise, found they could go on very well without him.
This morning his mother had expostulated mildly. "My son, you ought not to make yourself so miserable. You could not be more unhappy if you were to be lame always."
"It is _now_ I care about," he replied petulantly.
"I don"t know what to do with Maurice," he overheard her say to his father in the hall.
"Let him alone. I am ashamed of him," was Mr. Roberts"s reply.
And now, deserted and abused, Maurice was very miserable, and when he could stand it no longer he sought a distant spot in the garden and threw himself face down in the gra.s.s.
He had been lying here some time when a voice apparently quite near asked, "Have you hurt yourself?"
Lifting his flushed, unhappy face, he saw peeping at him through the hedge the girl Katherine had been so interested in on Sunday. She, too, was lying on the gra.s.s, and her fair hair was spread out around her like a veil. Maurice raised himself on his elbow and surveyed her in surprise, forgetting to reply.
"What is the matter?" she asked again, looking at him with a pair of serious gray eyes.
"Nothing," he answered.
The gray eyes grew merry. Rosalind laughed, as she said, "Then you ought not to groan. I thought when I heard you, perhaps you had fallen from a tree."
"I wasn"t groaning," he protested, feeling ashamed.
"Maybe you call it sighing, but it was dreadfully deep."