Peggy Part 4

"Why, of course!" she said. "Oh, dear! well, here I am; and I wanted to come, and I've been thinking about it for months, and then it goes and is like this!" She sighed, and wondered what they were doing at home, and at Fernley; then she became interested in her pretty room, and her heart overflowed once more with love to her dear ones at Fernley, who had made it so bright and charming for her. "I know what Margaret would say!" exclaimed Peggy, raising her head from the pillow. "She would say, 'Now you are there, my dear, try to make the best of it;' and so I will!

You hear me!" These last words were spoken aloud with some severity, and appeared to be addressed to the brush and comb, which took no notice whatever. And then Peggy made the best of that moment, and got up.

Breakfast was another ordeal, but not so bad as the tea of the night before; after breakfast came prayers, and then the cla.s.s-room. Peggy found herself seated at a desk, beside one of her cla.s.smates, Rose Barclay, a pretty brunette, with rosy cheeks and bright dark eyes. In the brief pause before study-time, the two girls made acquaintance, and Peggy learned that theirs was the largest freshman cla.s.s the school had ever had. All the others were in the west wing, where the freshmen belonged.

"You came late," said Rose Barclay, "and that's why you are over among the Jews and Seas. That's what they call the juniors and seniors; I've learned so much already!" she said, laughing. "They seem to have nicknames for everything and everybody in this place."

"Yes!" said Peggy. "Even the rooms are named!" and she told of Vanity Fair and the Owls' Nest.

"Corridor A?" asked Rose Barclay. "Oh, they must be Jews. That is Judea, I am pretty sure; and the Senior Corridor is the Mediterranean.

It's awfully silly, isn't it? and yet it's funny, too. I suppose we shall get into the swing of it after awhile. You homesick?"

Peggy nodded.

"So'm I! Cry last night?"

Peggy nodded again.

"So did I! but not so much as the girl next door to me. My! she must have cried about all night, I should think. I woke up two or three times, and she was crying every time, and I heard her sniffing in her bath this morning."

"Why didn't you go in and try to cheer her up?" demanded Peggy, rather fiercely.

Rose Barclay stared. "Oh, I couldn't do that! why, I've never spoken to her; it was that queer little piece that sat next to you. Besides, she looks as if she'd die if any one spoke to her."

The school was called to order, and Peggy soon forgot homesickness and everything else in the keen joy of mathematics.

She had chosen the scientific course--there were three courses in the school--in order to get as much of practical and as little of literary knowledge as might be. Geometry was her delight, and it was geometry over which she was bending now.

Most of the teachers at Pentland School expected little of the new pupil from Ohio. The written examinations that Peggy had pa.s.sed had caused many a head-shaking. The history teacher sighed; the gentle mistress of English literature groaned, and said, "Why must this child come here?"

Only Miss Boyle, the mistress of mathematics, had nodded her head over the papers. "Here's a girl who knows what she is about!" she said.

Accordingly, when Peggy entered cla.s.s this morning, she was surprised at the cordial greeting she received from the bright-eyed lady at the central desk; and an indefinable sense of being at home and among friends stole gradually over her, as she wrestled with one delightful problem after another.

Rose Barclay, at her side, was biting her pencil and twisting her pretty forehead into hard knots, and making little progress; but Peggy had forgotten her existence. The period pa.s.sed like a moment, as theorem after theorem was disposed of.

"Let EDF and BAC be two triangles, having the angle E equal to the angle B, the angle F to the angle C, and the included side EF to the included side BC; then will the triangle EDF be equal to the triangle BAC?"

"Of course it will!" Peggy drew triangles in swift and accurate demonstration. "Put the side EF on its equal BC, and let the point E fall on B, and the point F on C. Then, you see, of course--"

"I don't see how any one is ever to do this!" murmured her neighbour, in despair. "Why! why, you've done yours. Oh, just let me see, won't you? I never can work it out in the world, so do let me copy yours!"

Peggy reddened to the tips of her ears. "Do you--can you--are we allowed to do that?" she stammered.

"Oh! Just as you please!" said Rose Barclay, coldly. "I thought you might be willing to oblige me, that's all. It's of no consequence!"

"Oh! But you don't understand!" whispered Peggy, eagerly; but Rose had turned away, and paid no heed to her; and Miss Boyle tapped with her pencil and said, "Young ladies! No whispering in cla.s.s, if you please!"

In a few minutes a bell rang, and all the girls sprang up in great relief; geometry was not generally popular, and now came the "gym" hour, dear to all. Peggy turned at once to her neighbour, sure that she would be able to explain everything to the satisfaction of both. To her amazement and distress she met a look so cold and hostile that it seemed to freeze the words on her lips.

"Miss Barclay!" she said, imploringly. "You didn't understand me, indeed you didn't. I should be perfectly delighted to help you, of course I should, only I thought it might be against the rules. Of course, I might have known you would know what is allowed. I'm awfully sorry!"

Rose Barclay hesitated; her face seemed to soften for a moment; then it hardened again, and another change came over it which Peggy did not comprehend.

"I don't know what you mean!" she muttered. "Please excuse me, I am in a hurry." She was gone, and Peggy, turning in great distress, found Miss Boyle standing at her elbow. Had she heard? Peggy was sure she could not have heard, for there was no look of surprise or of anything peculiar in her pleasant face.

"You like geometry, Miss Montfort?"

"Oh, yes, I love geometry! Oh, please, are we allowed to help each other, Miss Boyle?"

"Certainly not!" said Miss Boyle, quietly. "Not upon any account. You can see for yourself that there would be no use in a girl's taking geometry if she cannot do the work herself."

"Yes, I see! I thought so, only--thank you very much. Do you--shall I go now?"

She looked around, and was startled to see that all the other girls had disappeared, and she was alone with the teacher.

Miss Boyle smiled, and her smile was so friendly that it warmed poor Peggy's heart.

"Yes, you may go now," she said; "but I shall hope to see something of you, Miss Montfort. If you will come to my room some evening, I will show you some pretty problems that are not in the text-books."

With this, the highest compliment she could pay a pupil, Miss Boyle went on her way; and Peggy, after wandering through two or three deserted cla.s.s-rooms, and breaking in upon a senior committee-meeting of a highly private nature, and walking into a pantry, found herself at last in the gymnasium.

This was a lofty and s.p.a.cious room, fitted with every possible appliance for gymnastic exercises. Peggy's eyes brightened as she gazed about her, at the rope-ladders, the parallel bars, the rings and vaulting-horses and spring-boards. If this were not Paradise, Peggy did not know what was, that was all.

Some of the girls were already arrayed in blouse and full trousers, and were taking their place in ranks, under the eye of an alert, graceful young woman in a pretty dark blue suit. Others were hurrying up from some apartment on a lower floor, and from the stairway came a hum of voices which showed that others were still making ready.

Bertha Haughton, in crimson blouse and black trousers, hurried up to Peggy.

"Here you are!" she cried. "I have been trying to find you. Where are your gym things? Haven't got any? Oh, how too bad!"

"I didn't know!" said poor Peggy. "It didn't say in the programme, did it? Can't I do anything without them? Oh, dear."

Her face, so bright a moment before, clouded so instantly with disappointment and mortification, that the experienced junior could hardly repress a smile.

"My dear! my dear!" she cried. "Do wait till I tell you. You can wear the Snowy's things. She hasn't come back yet, and you can wear them just as well as not till she comes."

"The Snowy?" repeated Peggy. She remembered vaguely that she had heard the name, but it meant nothing to her in her trouble.

"Yes, my chum, the Snowy Owl. I'm the Fluffy one, don't you remember?

The Snowy is a bit taller than you, but that is no matter; you can wear them perfectly well, I tell you. Come along, and I'll get you into them."

Peggy hung back, protesting faintly against appropriating the clothes of a person she had never seen; but finally she yielded to Bertha's vigorous pulls, and followed her down a winding stair, into a narrow room filled with a hubbub of girls in every stage of dressing and undressing. Viola Vincent fluttered up to her (it is difficult to flutter in a gymnasium suit, and only Viola's supremely b.u.t.terfly quality enabled her to do it), a charming vision of pale blue, with a profusion of tiny bra.s.s b.u.t.tons twinkling wherever a b.u.t.ton could be put.

"Here you are!" she cried, airily. "I haven't seen you for an age. I've been telling everybody about you, the V. V's vis-a-vis. It sounds so quaint, doesn't it? I adore quaintness. How do you like my new suit, Fluffy? Isn't it too cute for anything? This is the first time I've worn it; I think it is too perfectly sweet to live in, don't you?"

"I hope not!" said Bertha, laughing. "We should be sorry to have you pa.s.s away, Vanity, because your dress is too sweet."

"No, but really!" continued Viola, earnestly. "Do I exaggerate, Fluffy?

_Isn't_ it the sweetest thing you ever saw? I ask because I want to know, you know!"

Bertha's only reply was to pull her pink ear good-naturedly, and then dive head-foremost into a locker.