Peggy Parsons at Prep School Part 13

The boy's hand went swiftly into an inner pocket and drew out of a small envelope a tiny withered rose bud, quite browned and crumply. He held it silently over to her across the table, his eyes shining with delight.

She looked at it with an attempt at impersonal curiosity, and then the corners of her mouth crinkled up, and that flickering dimple came into play and she met his eyes with enjoyment as keen as his own.

"And you all sang to me," she reminded, "and I never was so excited before."

"Every one of us kept one of the flowers," he told her. "We didn't know who dropped them to us, we could only see just the fluff of your light hair-but we carry them just for luck. They are sort of insignia of adventure-"

"I was so afraid I'd killed you," Peggy confessed, "and I thought the only thing I could do to atone would be to go and be a Red Cross nurse, and help those that other people tried to kill."

The young man threw back his head and laughed until the boys at the other tables looked over and grinned in sympathy.

Peggy hastily turned her attention to her soup and ate in silence.

When they had finished their hot chocolate, too, she glanced out at the uninviting storm and sighed.

"It must be miles back to Andrews," she said. "I suppose we'd better start. The storm makes it awfully dark, doesn't it?"

The lights had been turned on in the little tea house and in contrast to their radiant cheer and that of the dancing flames in the fireplace, the outside world with its deep gray swirl of snow flakes looked very black and chill.

"It's not so much the storm-or not that only,-it must be five o'clock, anyway, you know."

Peggy jumped. "Oh, no, how _could_ it be? We won't get home in time, then."

"In time?"

"Yes, every girl has to be in her room at five-thirty so as to have plenty of time to dress for dinner at six. And the rule is partly to make it certain that we'll be in before it's very dark, too, I suppose."

"Well, we'll make a dive for it," he said. He drew out his watch, and then his face grew red with that same brilliant over-color that it had worn when she first saw him out there in the whipping winds. This time it was not the wind that had sent that flame over his forehead, chin and cheeks,-it was shame that his sense of responsibility should not have warned him of the pa.s.sing time.

"It's-half-past five _now_," he was obliged to tell her.

Peggy looked into his poor, miserable face, full of self-accusation, and with an effort of will she drew her own lips into their best smile.

"Oh, well," she said, "we've had a gorgeous time, and a few short hours ago I didn't expect ever to see another half-past five in all this world. I guess having one's life saved will be sufficient cause for delay to appease Mrs. Forest. I imagine even _she_ can get the importance of that."

But in her heart she knew just about how easy it was to explain things to Mrs. Forest-about as easy as moving a mountain. Once the princ.i.p.al decided in favor of punishment, not all the king's horses or all the king's men could change her mind. And, oddly enough, it was the small faults that she scored most heavily. Peggy sometimes felt that a girl might steal something and yet not arouse Mrs. Forest's wrath as thoroughly as one who was late to dinner.

"You are to be trained in _manners_ in my school," she often said, and it was true that with her these seemed to come before everything else.

She was not so strict in regard to chaperonage and all that as the New York finishing schools; she had no need to be. The school was situated in a small and desirable town, and among her pupils were none of the vapid little Miss Foolishnesses sometimes sent away to school because their parents or guardians can't manage them at home. All her students were bright, eager, typical American girls like Peggy and Katherine and Florence, most of whom had a definite idea and plan for their lives after graduation, the majority trending collegeward. So, although Peggy was the youngest girl who would receive a diploma next June, it would not be on the score of lack of chaperonage in going to tea with a young Amherst friend that she would meet with Mrs. Forest's objection, but merely on the technical ground of not returning at the exactly appointed time.

Hastily he shook out her sweater and held it for her, then flung into his own, and jammed his cap on his head, and catching up the puppy that all this while had been lying comfortably before the fire he held the door open for her. The storm blew in to meet them as they stood there, and with a shiver of determination they strapped on their snow-shoes and struck out. "We'll just go over to the next corner, where we can get a street car-we're only a little way from Andrews by car line," the boy told her.

They were fortunate enough to catch a car at once, and all unconscious of the friendly stares of the pa.s.sengers they congratulated each other on having left the tea room at exactly the right moment.

The car stopped directly in front of the Andrews gate. Their cheeks were aglow and their minds full of the afternoon's adventures rather than with their consequences. On the wide porch Peggy turned to her friend and said, "You must go, now, and be introduced to Mrs. Forest at some other time. They're at dinner now, and she'd kill me with her own hands if I call her away. So I'll let you go and just say, 'Thank you, and I've had a nice time'-"

She smiled up at him bravely, for presentiments of her meeting with the Forest were already beginning to creep into her heart.

"Good-by," he said, and in a moment more he was swinging down the walk and Peggy softly opened the door and scurried upstairs to her room. As always happens at a time like that, the gay roar of voices in the dining-room died down as she came in, and to everyone and certainly to Mrs. Forest the slight sound of her moccasined feet on the stairs was plainly audible.

When she came down a few minutes later, glowing in a pink evening dress, Mrs. Forest's stare was like a cl.u.s.ter of icicles.

"No supper for Miss Parsons," she sent word by the maid, and after Peggy, mighty glad that she had just had plenty of hot soup and chocolate, had gone back to her room amid the sympathetic glances of the dining-room full of girls, the princ.i.p.al called that dread and clammily unpleasant thing known to boarding schools as a "house-meeting."

She herself presided, and the meeting was seldom called for any good, you may believe. Its object was rather the punishment of someone with all the sickening stages of a public investigation into her conduct first. Mrs. Forest had a way of making the girls cry in a homesick fashion at these affairs and perhaps it is hardly doing her an injustice to say that she enjoyed it. At least the girls were all perfectly convinced that it was her sport in life, and they resented particularly that their idol, Peggy, should be the subject of this one.

A deputation of girls went clattering up after the victim and brought her down, showing no further marks of perturbation than a tiny little line of uncertainty in her forehead.

"Sit here, Miss Parsons," commanded Mrs. Forest as soon as all the girls had gathered.

Peggy sank gracefully into a chair and thrust out her pink satin slippers daintily. Mrs. Forest could not know how those tired little feet ached inside those bright slippers.

"Young ladies, I have called this meeting in order that I may have it understood that in my school the rules are to be obeyed. Now I want to ask each one of you what you think the rules are for? Do you think they were made with the idea of having them obeyed? Miss Thomas, will you answer first?"

Florence felt like the most complete traitor to Peggy that she should even be questioned on such a subject when she knew the whole proceeding was aimed at her friend.

"I-don't-know-" she said miserably.

"Don't know," Mrs. Forest smiled disagreeably, "I will ask Miss Parsons what she thinks."

Peggy looked up from her contemplation of the carpet and gave a little gasp.

"Oh, I'm not in a frame of mind to think they're very important one way or another," she replied, with an entirely maddening smile of deprecation. Her dimple flashed in and out of her cheek and she met Mrs.

Forest's gaze with an unperturbed calm.

"Your penalty for feeling that way-and acting as you feel is that you shall not be taken to Annapolis in the spring when all the other girls are going!" Mrs. Forest exclaimed with heat. "Does that make a difference in your att.i.tude?"

"No," said Peggy, "for most of this afternoon I never expected to go to Annapolis anyway-or anywhere else in the world again."

The girls caught the under note of earnestness in her voice and leaned forward interestedly, excitement beginning to shine in their questioning eyes.

"I was paralyzed back there in the snow when the storm came up," she went on, a bit of the weariness that was in every limb showing forth in her voice, "I gave up expecting to come back. And then a man saved me.

Never mind about Annapolis. I'm more than satisfied just as it is."

"Were you in danger from the storm, Peggy?" asked Katherine. "I was scared to pieces when I saw it coming up, but I didn't want to start a search party-and someway I thought you couldn't really get lost-we know all the places around here so well."

"But I couldn't see them," said Peggy, "and I got blown away every time I tried to turn in a new direction. A man saved me and-got me some hot chocolate, and-and I've been late to dinner before and all this fuss wasn't made over it."

"That's just the point," snapped Mrs. Forest, "you have been treated with too great lenience. If you had thought more of getting home on time you wouldn't have stopped for the hot chocolate. At least that part wasn't necessary."

"Oh, but it rather was," Peggy began, but looking at Mrs. Forest she wondered how she could be expected to understand. Could she ever have been a girl on snow-shoes, and have known the cold that gleamed in the frosty air and the hunger that comes after great exertion? No, what was the use of looking for understanding there? Peggy lightly tapped the floor with her foot.

"You may go," Mrs. Forest graciously permitted at this point, "I'm sorry, Miss Parsons," she so far unbent as to say at parting, "that you thought you were lost and had a fright, but discipline above all things-discipline, my dear. Perhaps after this we shan't have to combat your continual tardiness."

In their own room a while later Peggy threw her arms around her room-mate's neck and danced her this way and that, in a manner quite out of keeping with the tiredness that she felt.

"The greatest adventures, Katherinekins," she shouted. "Oh, listen, listen, I can hardly wait to tell you."