Miss Ashton's New Pupil Part 9

KATE UNDERWOOD'S APOLOGIES.

The scholars noticed that when Miss Ashton came into the hall a few nights after the Friday evening tableaux she looked very grave.

"What's gone wrong? Who has been making trouble? Look at the girls that belong to the Demosthenic Club! I'm glad I am not a member!"

These, and various other remarks, pa.s.sed from one to the other, as Miss Ashton walked through the hall to her seat on the platform.

It was the hour for evening prayers. Usually she read a short psalm, but to-night she chose the twelfth chapter of Romans, stopping at the tenth verse, and looking slowly around the school as she repeated,--

"'Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another.'" Then she closed her Bible and repeated these verses:--

"'These things I command you, That you love one another. Let love be without dissimulation. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. By love serve one another. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. And I pray that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and in all judgment. Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be like minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than himself. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.

"'But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you; for ye yourselves are taught of G.o.d to love one another.

"'Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of G.o.d, and every one that loveth is born of G.o.d, and knoweth G.o.d. He that loveth not, knoweth not G.o.d; for G.o.d is love.'

"I hesitate," said Miss Ashton, after a moment's pause, "to add anything to these expressive and solemn Bible words. They convey in the most forcible way what seems to me the highest good for which we can aim in this life,--the perfection of Christian character.

"I presume you all realize in some degree the world we make here by ourselves. Set apart in a great measure from what is going on around us, closely connected in all our interests, we depend upon each other for our happiness, our growth, our well-being. We are helped, or we are hindered, by what in a large sphere might pa.s.s us by. Nothing is too small to be of vital importance to us; the aggregate of our influences is made up of trifles. I have said this same thing to you time and time again, and yet I am sorry to find how soon it can be forgotten. If I could impress upon you these tender, beautiful gospel truths I have repeated, I should have had no occasion to detain you to-night. You would all of you have been bearing one another's burdens, instead of laying one upon delicate shoulders.

"'Taught of G.o.d to love one another.' Do those learn the lesson G.o.d teaches who, without, we will say, bearing any ill-will, injure the feelings of others? It may be by unkind words; it may be by an intentional rudeness; it may be by neglect; it may be by a criticism spoken secretly, slyly, circulated wittily, laughed at, but not forgotten. 'The ways that are unlovely;' how numerous they are, and how directly they tend to make hearts ache, and lives unhappy, no words can tell!

"Young ladies, if your lives with us sent you out into the world, first in accomplishments, thoroughly grounded in the elements of an education, that after all has only its beginning here, leaders in society, and yet you wanted the n.o.bility of that love which the Bible claims is the fruit of the spirit, we should have to say, we have 'labored in vain, and spent our strength for naught.' I wish I could see among you that tenderness of spirit that would shrink as sensitively from hurting another, as it does from being hurt yourselves. I am looking anxiously for it in this new year. I am looking hopefully for it; you will not disappoint me I am sure."

Then she asked them to sing the hymn "Blest be the tie that binds,"

made a short prayer, and waited before leaving the room for the hall to be cleared. It was well she did; for no sooner had the last girl left the corridor, before Kate Underwood came rushing back to the platform, and catching hold of Miss Ashton's hand said,--

"I didn't do it, I _didn't_ do it, Miss Ashton, to hurt Marion Parke's feelings! I like her so much; I think she is--is, why is about the best girl in the whole school. I only meant--why I meant he was such an old codger it was real funny; I thought it would make a nice tableau, and I never thought Marion would recognize it: I wouldn't have done it for the world!"

Then she stopped, looked earnestly in Miss Ashton's face, and asked,--

"Do you believe me, Miss Ashton?"

Now, Miss Ashton knew Kate to be a very impulsive girl, doing many foolish, and often wrong things, only sometimes sorry for them, so she did not receive her excited apologies with the consideration which they really deserved.

She said, perhaps a little coldly,--

"I am glad you have come to see the matter both more kindly and reasonably, Kate. Yes! I do believe you: I do not doubt you feel all you say; but, Kate, you are so easily tempted by what seems to you fun. I can't make you see, fun that becomes personal in a way to injure the feelings of any one ceases to be fun, becomes cruelty.

There is a great deal of that in this school this term. Hardly a day pa.s.ses but some of the girls come to me crying because their feelings have been wounded, and I am truly grieved to say, you are oftener the cause of it than any other girl. To be both witty and wise is a great gift; to be witty without being wise is a great misfortune; sometimes I think it has been your misfortune. You are not a cruel girl. You are at bottom a kind girl; yet see how you wound! You didn't _mean_ to hurt Marion Parke; you like her, yet you did: you made fun of an old country cousin, whose visit must have been a trial to her. You are two Kates, one thinks only of the fun and the _eclat_ of a witty tableau; the other would have done and said the kindest and the prettiest things to make Marion Parke happy. Which of these Kates do you like best?" Miss Ashton now laid her hand lovingly over the hands of the excited girl, who answered her with her eyes swimming in tears, "Your kind, Miss Ashton." Then she put up her lips for the never-failing kiss, and went quietly away, but not to her own room.

There was something truly n.o.ble in the girl, after all. She went to Marion's door and, knocking gently, asked if Marion would walk with her to the grove.

Much surprised, but pleased, Marion readily consented, and the two went out in the early darkness of an October night alone, the girls whom they met in the corridors staring at them as they pa.s.sed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Marion turned, threw both arms around Kate's neck, kissing her over and over again.--Page 89.]

"Marion!" said Kate, "I ask your pardon a thousand, million times! I never, _never_ meant to hurt your feelings! I forgot everything but the fun I saw in the old farm-scenes, and the new fashionable school-girl out for a vacation; I did truly. I--I don't say it would ever have occurred to me if that cousin of yours hadn't come here, because that wouldn't be true, and I'm as bad as George Washington"

(with a little laugh now), "I can't tell a lie; but can say that I never would have written one word of that miserable farce if I had ever dreamed it would have hurt your feelings: will you forgive me?"

Marion had listened to this long speech with varying emotions. As we know, she had been wounded by the tableaux, but her feelings had been exaggerated by her room-mates, and if the matter had been dropped at once she would probably soon have forgotten it. Kate's apology filled her with astonishment. How could it ever have come to her knowledge that she had been wounded, and how came she to think it of enough importance to make an apology now.

Instead of answering, Marion turned, threw both arms around Kate's neck, kissing her over and over again.

Kate, surprised in her turn, returned the kisses with much ardor.

It was a girl's forgiveness, and its recognition, without another word.

Then they walked down into the grove, their arms around each other's waists, and the belated birds, scurrying to their nests, sang evening songs to them.

On the side of the little lake that nestles in the midst of the grove, two petted frogs, grown large and lazy on the sweet things with which their visitors so freely regaled them, heard their steps, hopped up a little nearer to the well-worn path, and saluted them with an unusually loud ba.s.s.

Whether it was the influence of Miss Ashton's words, or the generous act of apology,--the n.o.blest showing of a n.o.ble mind that has erred,--it would be hard to tell; but, certain it is, Kate Underwood had learned a lesson this time which, let us hope, she will never forget.

When Marion went back to her room it was quite time for study hours to begin; but her room-mates had so many questions to ask about Kate's object in inviting her out to walk, that a good half-hour pa.s.sed before they began their lessons.

Marion did not feel at liberty to repeat what Kate had said, and so she frankly told them.

CHAPTER XV.

MISS ASHTON'S FRIDAY NIGHT.

Miss Ashton, a little timid from the use made of the liberty she had given for the Friday night entertainments, decided for a time to take the control of them into her own hands, and as something novel, that might be entertaining, she proposed that the school should prepare original papers, to be read aloud, the reading to be followed by "a spread" given by the Faculty. She made no suggestion with regard to the character of the papers to be sent in, other than to say that she knew very well there were some good writers in the school, and she should expect every one to do her best.

This proposal was gladly accepted. The girls clapped when she had finished, and some began to stamp noisily, but this a motion of the princ.i.p.al's hand checked.

There began at once to be conjectures as to whose piece would be the best. Nine-tenths of the girls agreed it would be Kate Underwood, the other tenth were for Delia Williams, who, when she tried for an honor, seldom failed to secure it; and hadn't she once written a piece on Robert Browning, of which not a scholar could understand a word, but which, it was reported, Miss Ashton said "was excellent, showing rare appreciation of the merits of a great poet"?

One thing was certain, there was hardly a girl in school who had not, before going to bed that night, wandered around in her dazed thoughts for some subject upon which she could write in a way that would surprise every one.

Lilly White, the dunce of the school, had hers written by the beginning of study hours. It covered three pages of foolscap paper, and had at least the merit of being written on only one side.

Among the few books Marion Parke had brought from her Western home, was an old magazine, printed by a Yale College club, and edited by her father when he was a member of the college.

This had in it one short story suggested by the West Rock at New Haven. In this rock was a rough cave, and here, tradition said, the regicides Goff and Whalley hid themselves from pursuit, after the murder of Charles I. The story was well told, not holding too rigorously to facts, but at the same time faithful enough to real incidents to make it not only interesting but valuable.

These were tender and touching scenes of a wife and a betrothed, who, through dangers of discovery and arrest, carried food and papers to the fugitives.

The story had always been a great favorite of Marion's. One day when she felt homesick she had taken it out, read it, and left it on the top of her table, under her Bible. Being very busy afterwards, and consequently the homesickness gone, she did not think of it again; she did not even notice that it had been abstracted from the table and another magazine, similar in appearance, put in its place.

If Miss Ashton had foreseen the deep interest the school were taking in the proposed entertainment, she might have hesitated to propose it.

The truth was, it took the first place; studies became of secondary importance. "What subjects had been chosen for the pieces? how they were to be treated? how they progressed? how they would be received?"

These were the questions asked and answered, often under promise of secrecy, sometimes with an open bravado amusing to see.