A Dear Little Girl at School Part 10

There was complete silence, while Mr. Horner looked from one to the other as if he would search their very hearts. Some of the girls returned his gaze pleadingly, some dropped their heads, Clara Adams, with a little smile of indifference, began to play with her pencil. Mr.

Horner glared at her. "Put that down!" he said, and she dropped it, though still wearing her impertinent little smile. "I wish to know,"

said Mr. Horner, "who was the first to arrive in this room this morning?"

"I was the last," spoke up Clara.

"You were not asked that," said Mr. Horner, turning upon her.

After quite a silence, Margaret arose. "I think I was the first, Mr.

Horner," she said, and then sat down again.

"There was no one in the room when you came?"

"No, Mr. Horner."

"And was this on the board?" He pointed to the drawing.

"Yes, Mr. Horner."

"You did not do it?"

"No, Mr. Horner," then with a little catch of her breath, "I wouldn't do such a mean thing, not for nothing."

"Not for anything, I think you mean, Margaret," said Mr. Horner in gentler tones.

"Not for anything," repeated Margaret, meekly.

"Then, I shall have to ask each separately, and I expect a truthful answer," said Mr. Horner. He began putting the question, going from one to the next till every girl in the room had been questioned.

"It might have been one of the older girls," said Miss Newman, in an undertone to him.

Clara caught the words, as she was nearest. "I should think it would be very easy to know who did it," she said, "when there is only one of us girls who stays in the house."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Mr. Horner severely.

Clara was not daunted. "I mean that there is only one girl who can come into the school-room before the others can get here."

"Do you mean my niece? I should as soon think of suspecting Miss Newman herself." He looked over at Edna with a little rea.s.suring smile.

"However, as we do not seem to be making much headway I shall take other means of finding out who did this very unladylike and unkind thing."

Then he gave them such a lecture as none of them forgot and if the G. R.'s did not have their motto brought home to them on that occasion they never did. Then Mr. Horner returned to his own school-room and Miss Newman called one of the girls to clean off the board.

Nothing further was said of the matter, and Miss Newman went on as if it had never happened; but one day the last of the week, the girls were asked to ill.u.s.trate in pencil drawings a story from their history lesson.

"Oh, Miss Newman, I couldn't possibly do it," exclaimed Dorothy. "I don't expect finished drawings," she replied, "and you may even make them as humorous as you choose, but I want some little attempt, no matter how slight. Mr. Horner has asked that you do your best, and I shall expect you to hand in something beside blank paper."

Dorothy and Edna both sighed. Neither one had the slightest idea of drawing and knew that their results would be absurd, but they labored away and finally with half deprecating, half amused expressions showed their drawings to one another. It was as much as they could do to keep from laughing outright, they were so very funny, but they signed their names in the corner as Miss Newman directed them to do, and handed them in. Then, Miss Newman took them into the next room. At the close of school, she said, "Mr. Horner wishes Clara Adams to stay after school; he wishes to see her about her drawing."

Clara perked up and looked around with a little smirk. So she was the prize draughtsman, and she remained with a perfectly good grace.

However, it was a very different looking Clara who was led into the room the next morning by Mr. Horner. Her eyes were swollen with crying and she wore a rebellious expression when Mr. Horner announced, "Clara Adams wishes to make a public acknowledgment of her part in the rudeness directed against Miss Newman by the drawing you all saw on the board, and she will also make a public apology both to her teacher and to my niece."

Clara murmured something unintelligible and burst into tears. The only words the girls could make out were "I did it." It was the most terrible thing that had ever happened to any of them and Edna felt so sorry for the culprit that all resentment vanished altogether. She forgot entirely that she was included in the apology, if apology there was, and all morning she cast the most sympathetic looks across the room at Clara.

It came out later that the drawings were the proof of the child's guilt, for they were done in the same style as the caricature and because they were so much better than the rest it was evident that only Clara could have made the figure on the board. She had come very early, had slipped upstairs before anyone else and had gone out again to return later and thus hoped to avoid any suspicion. It happened, too, that Ellen saw her come in and go out again and this of course clinched the matter when she was brought face to face with the Irish girl who did not know her name but recognized the hat and coat she wore.

The affair made a great impression but somehow did not increase Miss Newman's popularity, for the idea of the drawings was hers and Clara could not forgive her for the position into which she had forced her, therefore she lost no opportunity of making it as unpleasant for her teacher as she could in the thousand and one ways a sly and unprincipled girl can, and her little pin-p.r.i.c.ks were so annoying, that finally Dorothy and Edna, who had not particularly cared for the new teacher, began to stand up for her and to do as many kind things as they could. Perhaps the G. R. Club was mainly responsible for this, but at all events it made matters a little happier for the teacher.

As for Clara, Dorothy set her face against any sort of friendship with her, but it was not within Edna's heart to be unkind to anyone, and she made up her mind that she would meet Clara half way if ever the chance came.

Uncle Justus never mentioned the affair of the caricature to her, but she knew he had never the slightest belief that she had done it and his open approval of her before the whole cla.s.s was very much valued. She had won her way into the hearts of most of the girls, and there were only two or three of Clara's most adoring adherents who still called her "a pet" and said she was at the bottom of all Clara's trouble. This seemed a very strange way to look at it, but poor Clara was so blinded by jealousy and rage that she saw nothing in the right light. Edna wondered if she would ever cease to dislike her, and insisted to Dorothy that they ought to try to persuade her to come into the club. "You see,"

she said, "if she could once find out what doing to others really means she maybe would get over all her hatefulness. Mother thinks so, and I'm not going to give up being nice to her if I get a chance."

"Well, you don't catch me," returned Dorothy. "I don't want to go with such a horrid story-teller as she is. I shouldn't think you would, either."

Edna said not a word, but still hoped.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FRIENDLESS FRIENDS

Margaret came to school in great excitement one Monday morning. "I'm going to have a party," she said to Edna. "I'll tell you all about it at recess."

The idea of Margaret's really having a party was most interesting when Edna remembered that it had been just a year since she was adopted by Mrs. MacDonald. She had improved very much in this time, both in speech and manner, and no happier child could be found than she. To be sure she had everything to make her happy, as Dorothy often said, a beautiful home, a kind mother and friends who took pains to make her forget how forlorn she had once been. She was very grateful for all these things, and rarely asked for anything more than was offered to her, so that Mrs.

MacDonald was all the more ready to give her pleasures which she did not ask for.

Jennie and Dorothy were admitted into the little group which gathered to hear about the party. "Tell us all about it, Margaret," said Edna. "Just begin at the beginning."

"Well," said Margaret, "mother was saying to me on Sat.u.r.day evening, 'Margaret, do you know it is almost a year since you became my own little daughter? Now I think we ought to celebrate the day of your coming to your home. What would you like to do?' So I thought and thought, and then I said, 'I never had a party in all my life, would it be too much to celebrate by having one?' and she said, 'Not at all, though I should first like to know what girls you would like to invite,' and I told her all the G. R. Club. 'Anyone else?' she asked, and I thought of Nettie Black. 'I'd like to have Nettie,' I said, and then I remembered how lonely I used to be even at the Friendless, and how glad I used to be when you came to see me, Edna, and I thought of two or three who were still there, girls who haven't been adopted, and I said I'd like to have them. Then mother said, 'Very well, only the others may not want to come if you have poor children like them, and you'd better ask the girls, and if they refuse you can make up your mind which you would rather have, the girls of the club or the Friendlessers.'"

"Oh, Margaret, you know we won't care," said Edna earnestly.

"I knew _you_ wouldn't, but I didn't know about them all. I shall have to ask, you see, because it seems to me that of all the people I know, the Friendlessers are the very ones who ought to come when it is to celebrate my coming away from there, and then, too they don't have good times like we do."

The girls all called the Home of the Friendless "The Friendless" and the children there, "The Friendlessers" so they knew quite well whom Margaret meant.

"How soon is the party to be?" asked Jennie.

"Next Sat.u.r.day afternoon. The Friendlessers can come then better than any other time, and besides we live out of town, and it will be easier for everyone to come in the afternoon."

"I shall come," said Dorothy decidedly, "and I think it is a beautiful idea for you to have the Friendlessers."

"And of course I shall come," put in Jennie.

"I know my sister will," said Edna.

"And mine," echoed Dorothy.