I know all about it, though there was a time when I also was ignorant.
Look! she is feeling of her cheek already; it begins to sting.
Tomorrow she will be all over patches, red and white; itching--there is nothing to describe the itching. It is beyond words. Next day her face will begin to swell, and in two days more--the School Birthday, my dear--she will be like nothing human, a mere shapeless lump of pain and horror. She will not sleep by night or rest by day. She will go home to her parents, and they will not know her, but will think we have sent them a smallpox patient by mistake. Her eyes--"
"Oh, hush! hush, Ma.s.sachusetts!" cried Maine. "Oh! poor thing! poor thing! what shall I do? I feel as if it were all my fault, somehow."
"Your fault that she sneaked and eavesdropped, and then stole your decoration? Oh! come, Maine, don"t be fantastic!"
"No, Ma.s.sachusetts, I don"t mean that. But if I had only known, myself, what they were, I should never have spoken of them, and all this would never have happened."
"The moral of which is, study botany!" said Ma.s.sachusetts.
"I"ll begin to-morrow!" said Maine.
"And what is to be the end of the dogwood story, I wonder!" said Tennessee, meeting Ma.s.sachusetts in a breathless interval between two exercises on the School Birthday, the crowning event of the Harvest Festivities at Miss Wayland"s. "Have you heard the last chapter?"
"No! what is it?"
"Maine is in a dark room with the moaning Thing that was Chicago, singing to her, and telling her about the speeches and things last night. She vows she will not come out again to-day, just because she was at chapel and heard the singing this morning; says that was the best of it, and she doesn"t care much about dancing. Maine! and Miss Wayland will not let us break in the door and carry her off bodily; says she will be happier where she is, and will always be glad of this day. I"ll tell you what it is, Ma.s.sachusetts, if this is the New England conscience I hear so much about, I"m precious glad I was born in Tennessee."
"No, you aren"t, Old One! you wish you had been born in Maine."
"Well, perhaps I do!" said Tennessee.
THE END.