Honey-Sweet Part 7

"These rings are, I judge, of considerable value," she said. "This is an exquisite little ruby. The locket is quaintly enamelled. The miniature is of masterful workmanship; whose portrait is it?" she asked, raising her eyes to Anne's frightened face.

Anne shook her head. Her voice failed her. And she did not know that the stately old gentleman was her mother's grandfather.

"And you so disregard the rules as to have jewels in your open box--and money of this value," continued Mademoiselle, emptying the coins out of the bead purse and putting her finger on the gold piece.

"Is that money?" asked Anne, in amazement.

Mademoiselle looked up. "Do you mean to tell me that you were unaware that this is a twenty-dollar coin?" she asked.

"I never thought," answered Anne. "Of course I ought to have known. It was stupid. But I had never seen gold money before."

"Where did you get it?" demanded Mademoiselle. "And the other things?"

It was the question that Anne dreaded.

"I cannot tell you, Mamzelle," she answered, in a low voice.

"Anne! I demand to know whose things these are," said Mademoiselle, in her most awful voice.

"Mine, mine," cried Anne. "But I cannot tell you about them, Mamzelle.

Indeed I cannot--not if you kill me. I promised. I promised."

In vain did Mademoiselle Duroc question. At last she dismissed Anne who crept back to bed, and, holding Honey-Sweet tight, sobbed herself to sleep.

CHAPTER X

The next morning Anne was summoned to the office; there she was coaxed and threatened by Miss Morris and questioned keenly by Mademoiselle Duroc. All to no purpose. She said in breathless whispers that she didn't mean to be disobedient, she didn't want to refuse to answer, but she could not, could not tell anything about the jewels. She confessed that Miss Drayton and Mrs. Patterson did not know that she had them.

"She must answer." Miss Morris's voice was rougher than it had ever been in Mademoiselle Duroc's presence. "Permit me to whip her, Mademoiselle, and make her tell."

Mademoiselle shook her head slowly. Her voice was like spun silk as she replied: "If she does not answer when I speak, it is not my thought that she would answer to the rod. Anne!" She fixed her clear, commanding eyes again on the little culprit.

"Oh, Mamzelle, don't ask me," sobbed Anne. "I would tell you if I could.

I will do anything else you want me. But I cannot--cannot--cannot tell."

Mademoiselle Duroc rose, looked over Anne's head as if she were not there, and spoke to Miss Morris. "For the present, certainly, it is useless to persist," she said. "Unless Anne Lewis makes the explanation of this matter, for a month she may not go on the playground, she may not take any recreation except a walk alone in the yard, she may have double tasks in the three studies in which her grade marks are lowest. I should send the full account of the matter to Madame Patterson and request that this child be removed from St. Cecilia's School, were it not that Miss Drayton writes her sister is very ill. Therefore I will wait until the visit which Miss Drayton proposes to make to the city before the holidays and then I will place this matter before her. Anne is now excused from the room. I do not desire to see longer that which I have not before seen--a pupil who does not obey me."

Neither Mademoiselle Duroc nor Miss Morris mentioned the subject and we may be sure that Anne did not, but somehow the girls got hold of enough to gossip over and misrepresent the matter. It was whispered that Anne had a great heap of jewels and money and was being punished because she would not tell from whom she had stolen them. Perhaps she was to be sent to prison. Her cla.s.smates stared at her with curious, unfriendly eyes and even when she was allowed again to go on the playground, they kept away from her. Poor little Anne was very lonely.

Several days after the jewels were discovered, Miss Morris was exceedingly cross. It was impossible to please her, even with perfect recitations, and those Anne had, for she was studying more diligently than she had ever done--even the hated arithmetic--partly to occupy the long, lonely hours and partly to make up for her unwilling disobedience.

By degrees Miss Morris became less stern. Anne ought to be punished and that severely, she thought; no pupil had ever before dared disobey Mademoiselle. But Miss Morris hated to see a child so lonely and miserable. She grew gentler and gentler with Anne, crosser and crosser with the other girls. It was certainly no affair of theirs to punish a cla.s.smate for--they knew not what.

She saw and approved that sweet-tempered little Elsie Hart smiled and nodded to Anne at every quiet chance. Elsie would have liked to go on being friends, but that, she knew, would make the other girls angry and she prudently preferred to be on bad terms with one rather than with four. But she always offered her Sat.u.r.day bonbons to Anne as to the other girls; she couldn't enjoy them herself if she were so mean and stingy as not to do that, she declared stoutly.

One afternoon--Anne was looking especially dejected as she took her lonely walk in the west yard--Miss Morris thrust into Elsie's hands a bag of candies and whispered hurriedly: "When you go to divide--yonder is Anne under the grape arbor and I do believe she's crying."

Elsie trotted straight to Anne with her smiles and bonbons. Anne was so cheered that she came in, sat down at the study-table, and took up her history with whole-hearted interest.

Amelia, on the other side of the table, looked up and frowned. "That's an awful hard hist'ry lesson," she said.

Anne was disinclined to speak to Amelia--Amelia had been so hateful!--but finally she said rather curtly: "I don't think it's hard."

Amelia twirled a box that she held in her hand. "I do. I can't remember those old Mexican names, or who went where and which whipped when."

That made Anne laugh. "Of course you can," she said. "Just play you're there, marching 'long with the 'Merican soldiers. There's General Taylor, sitting stiff and straight on a white horse. Up rides a little Mexican on a pony. 'Look at our gre't big army and see how few men you've got,' he says. 'S'render, General Taylor, s'render, before we beat you into a c.o.c.ked hat.' General Taylor looks at him--no, he doesn't, he looks 'way 'cross the hills,--mountains, I mean--and says, 'General Taylor never s'renders.' And the Mexican whips his pony and gallops away. Then General Taylor he draws up his little army of five thousand br-rave Americans right here--" Anne put her finger on an ink-spot.

"Let me get my book, Anne, and you go over all the lesson, won't you?"

pleaded Amelia. "I used to know my lessons when you did that. And Miss Morris says if I don't do better she is going to drop me out of cla.s.s and give me review work in recreation hour. Please, Anne."

"I don't care if I do," responded Anne. She was lonely enough to feel that she would even enjoy studying a history lesson with stupid Amelia.

"I'll leave my box here." Amelia started off, but came back a moment later. "I forgot I left my purse in my box," she said. She opened the purse and counted the money. "I had another two-franc piece," she said, with a sharp look at Anne. Anne glanced from the dominoes that she was drawing up in line of battle on the table.

"Did you?" she asked unconcernedly.

Her indifference provoked Amelia. "Yes, I did," she a.s.serted. "I had two two-franc pieces in my purse. One of them's gone. Did you take it, Anne Lewis?"

"Take it?" Anne repeated. Was Amelia really suspecting--accusing her of taking the money? That was impossible!

"Yes, take it," cried Amelia, flushed and angry. "You stole those jewels and money from no one knows who. Now you've stolen my money. You've got to give it back."

Every drop of blood seemed to ebb from Anne's face, leaving it as pale as ashes, while her narrowed eyes blazed like live coals.

"If you say that I--that word--again, Amelia Harvey," she said slowly, "I will strike you."

"Why, Anne Lewis!" exclaimed the shocked voice of Miss Morris who was sitting at her desk, correcting exercises. "What a wicked speech!"

Anne was unrepentant. "She shall not say--that," she said. "She is wicked to tell such a falsehood."

"I want my money," persisted Amelia.

"How much money did you have in your purse, Amelia?" asked Miss Morris.

"Think now. Be sure."

"I had two two-franc pieces," insisted Amelia, "and one is gone."

"You had two yeth'day," lisped Elsie Hart, who had just come in. "And you bought a boxth of chocolath."

Amelia reddened. "I--I'd forgot," she muttered.

"Forgot! Amelia! You spent your money and then accused your schoolmate of taking it!" Miss Morris exclaimed indignantly. "You are a careless, careless, bad, bad girl. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You must beg Anne to forgive you."

"I'll not forgive her, not if she asks me a thousand years," stormed Anne.