Wild Kitty.
by L. T. Meade.
CHAPTER I.
BESSIE, ALICE, GWIN, ELMA.
Bessie! Bessie!
"Yes, mother," replied Bessie Challoner. "You"ll be late for school, child, if you are not quick."
"Bessie!" shouted her father at the top of his voice from below stairs.
"Bessie; late as usual."
"I am really going, father; I am just ready," was the eager reply.
Bessie caught up her sailor hat, shoved it carelessly over her ma.s.s of thick hair, and searched frantically round her untidy bedroom for the string bag which contained her schoolbooks.
"Oh, Bessie, you"ll get into a sc.r.a.pe," said Judy, one of her younger sisters, dancing into the room. "Why, you are late. I hear the schoolbell ringing; it will stop in a moment."
"Don"t worry me, Judy," cried Bessie. "Do you know where my bag is?"
Judy ran into the middle of the room, turned round, and began to laugh ecstatically. "Do you know where it is, you little good-for-nothing?
Have you put it hiding?"
"Yes, yes, yes," screamed the child, jumping up and down in her joy.
"Then, if you don"t give it to me at once, I"ll--"
But Judy had dodged her and was out of the room. Up to the attic flew the child, and after her dashed Bessie. The bag was found in the corner of the linen-cupboard. Bessie aimed a frenzied blow at Judy, who once again dodged her, then the schoolgirl ran downstairs and was out of the house.
"Bessie, for shame!" said her brother, who was standing smoking his cigarette in a very lazy manner in the garden. "Why, you"ll never get full marks."
"Don"t," said Bessie. "I feel quite hunted between you all."
She had got on the highroad now, and could walk away in peace. She was a tall girl, somewhat bony-looking at present, with a face which showed abundance of intellect, large dreamy eyes, a wide mouth, a flat nose, a long chin. Bessie was certainly not at all a pretty girl; but, notwithstanding this fact, there were few of all the pupils at Middleton School who approached her in popularity. She was clever without being a sc.r.a.p conceited, and was extremely good-natured, doing her work for the pleasure of doing it and not because she wanted to outstrip a schoolfellow. She was conscientious too, and would have scorned to do a mean or shabby thing; but she was hopelessly untidy, careless to a fault, late for school half her days, getting into countless sc.r.a.pes and getting out of them as best she could--the b.u.t.t of her cla.s.s as well as the favorite, always true to herself and indifferent to the censures or the praise of her fellow-creatures.
"Well, Bess, is that you? Do wait for me," called out a panting voice in the distance.
Late as she was, Bessie stopped. It was never her way to leave a fellow-creature in the lurch.
A girl with dancing eyes and rosy cheeks came panting and puffing round the corner.
"I just caught a sight of the red ribbon with which you tie your hair,"
she said. "I am so glad you are late; I am too, and I am quite ashamed of myself."
"Why in the world should you be ashamed of yourself, Alice?" asked Bessie. "I don"t suppose you meant to be late."
"Of course not; but I shall lose my mark for punctuality; and you know, Bessie, I am feverishly anxious to get a move, and to--to win the scholarship at the midsummer break-up."
Bessie yawned slightly.
"Come on, Alice," she said; "I am disgracefully late as usual, and we need not make matters worse. I suppose we must wait in the hall now until prayers are over."
"It"s too bad," said Alice. "I"ll tell you afterward how it happened, Bessie. I am glad you waited for me. They always scold you so much for being late that they will not take so much notice of me. May I slip into my place in form behind you?"
"If you like," said, Bessie.
They entered the great schoolhouse, turned down a long corridor, deposited their hats and jackets on the pegs provided for the purpose, and went into the schoolroom just when the pupils were filing into their different cla.s.ses.
Both girls had marks against their names for unpunctuality. Alice frowned and fidgeted, turned scarlet, glanced nervously at her fellow-pupils, but Bessie took the matter with her wonted calm. Soon she forgot all about it. She became absorbed in her different studies, each one of which she had prepared with extreme attention. As she answered question after question her great, full, dreamy eyes seemed to lighten with hidden fire, her face lost its plainness, the intellect in it transformed it. One or two other girls in the cla.s.s watched her with a slight degree of envy.
Bessie was very high up in the school. As usual she quickly rose to the head of the form; this position she kept without the slightest difficulty during lesson after lesson.
Alice, muddled already by that mark for unpunctuality, got through her work badly; as Bessie rose in the cla.s.s Alice went down. At the end of the morning"s work the two girls were far as the poles asunder.
"I can"t think how you do it," said Alice, coming up to Bessie during recess, and linking her hand through her arm. "You never seem to mind disgrace at all."
"Of course I mind disgrace," answered Bessie. "Come out into the playground, won"t you Alice? We can"t talk in here."
They went out and began pacing up and down the wide quadrangle devoted to the purpose. Other girls pa.s.sed them two and two, each girl talking to her special companion.
"How very handsome Gwin Harley looks this morning," said Alice, pausing in her grumbling to gaze at a slender and lovely girl who pa.s.sed them, walking with another dark-eyed, somewhat plain girl of the name of Elma Lewis.
"I wish she was not such friends with Elma," said Bessie. "I like Gwin very much indeed; I suppose every one in the school does."
"Catch Elma not making up to her," said Alice. "Why, you know Gwin is as rich as ever she can be; she has a pony-carriage of her own. I cannot make out why she comes to Middleton School."
"Because it is the best school in the neighborhood," said Bessie somewhat proudly. "It is not a question of money, nor of anything but simply of learning; we learn better at Middleton School than anywhere else; there are better teachers and--"
"But such a rum lot of girls," said Alice. "Of course we all go in sets, and our set is quite the nicest in the school; but all the same, I wonder a rich man like Mr. Harley allows Gwin to come here."
Gwin and Elma drew up at that moment in front of the other two.
"Bessie," said Gwin, "I saw you carrying everything before you this morning. But," she added hastily, "that is neither here nor there. I shall never be a great learned genius like you, but I shall admire geniuses all the same. Now, I want to say that Elma is coming to tea with me this afternoon, and will you both come as well? We have a good deal to talk over."
Bessie"s face lightened.
"I should like it very much indeed," she said; "but you know I must get through my studies first."
"Oh, you won"t take long over them."
"Yes, but I shall," answered Bessie; "there is a very stiff piece of German to translate this afternoon. I can manage French and mathematics of course, and--"
"Oh, don"t begin to rehea.r.s.e your different studies," said Gwin, holding up her hand in a warning att.i.tude. "I don"t care in the least what you learn, Bessie; I want you to come. Because," she added, "you are such an honest creature."
"Why should not I be honest?" said Bessie, opening her eyes wide. "I have never had any temptation to be anything else."