The Cricket Part 29

American history was taught by both the Benjamins. It was their hobby.

Not the sort of history taught in most schools, "fixed up" for the young, but the true history of our country--its blunders, its stupidities, its triumphs.

So through the whole curriculum, acquiring knowledge was a pleasant thing. It was not a matter of being fed with little unrelated chunks of information, on this or on that. It was rather being led into a great field, where now this part, now that, held your interest, but you never lost sight of the whole expanse.

As for play, there were nutting expeditions, hay rides, marshmallow roasts, any number of out-of-door joys. It was as nearly a normal life as can be reached in these days of ours.

To Isabelle it was unbelievable. Everything they did during the day interested her. Her old pa.s.sion for leadership spurred her on, but now it was a spur to excel in legitimate things. Her sense of rebellion was laid away, because she liked nearly everything she had to do, and her days were so busy that there was no excess vitality to work itself off in pranks.

Not that she was a reformed soul--far from it! There were times when she balked the duties she liked least, and was gently called upon by Mrs.

Benjamin to punish herself. After the first amus.e.m.e.nt of this novelty wore off, it became plain to her that the punishment she administered to herself was always more severe than any one else would have prescribed.

Sometimes punishment was decided upon by the community as a whole. By degrees the girls all began to realize "the social spirit" for the first time in their self-centred, individualistic lives.

"Mrs. Benjamin," Isabelle said one day, bursting into the presence of that lady, "I feel full of the devil to-day!"

"Dost thou, Isabelle? Dear me! we must think of something to dispossess him."

"Better give me something _hard_ to do."

"It is now half past eight. Suppose thee goes down to the big field to help Henry pitch hay until ten."

"All right," agreed Isabelle.

"Thee might speak to Mr. Benjamin on thy way out, about the seven devils that possess thee," smiled her teacher.

Another influence that was working in the development of the girl was the dependent devotion of Peggy Starr. Her young room-mate worshipped Isabelle. She began by following her through fire, and she would not have stopped at water. What Isabelle did and said and thought was Peggy's law.

Now Mrs. Benjamin took hold of the situation at once. She disapproved of the school girl "crush." She had a long talk with Isabelle and urged her to look after the younger girl, to help her forget her "claim" to invalidism, to influence her to normal activity. Isabelle accepted the responsibility and felt it deeply. She restrained herself from this and that because of Peggy. If she did things, Peggy would do them. So again, wise Mrs. Benjamin let her teach herself her first lessons in self-control.

"Isabelle," Mr. Benjamin said to her, when she had been at the school about two months, "I have a letter from thy father. He says thee does not write home."

"I've been busy," Isabelle said, frowning.

"But what does thee do on Sunday afternoons, when the other girls write home?"

"I'd rather not tell."

"But thee writes; I've seen thee."

She nodded.

"I want thee to write thy mother to-day, Isabelle," he said, sternly.

He told his wife of this conversation later.

"She writes volumes on Sunday," he said, "now what does she do with it?"

"She is one of the strangest children we've ever had, Adam," she answered.

"She is rather exhausting to me," he said.

"She's lived under abnormal conditions of some sort. I cannot seem to visualize her parents at all. She never speaks of them. She was so bitter and sullen when she came to us," Mrs. Benjamin mused. "I must try to get her confidence about her parents, she may be needing help."

"She came to thee just in time, my Phoebe."

"Yes, that's true. A little more and she would have been a bitter cynic at eighteen. Even now when she just begins to respond, like a frost-bitten plant, I am not sure of the blossom."

"Hot-house growth, thee must remember."

"She interests me deeply, and I'm growing very fond of her."

"Lucky Isabelle," her husband smiled.

Later in the day when the other girls were out at play Mrs. Benjamin came upon Isabelle, pen in hand, gazing into the distance.

"What is troubling my child?"

"Mr. Benjamin told me to write to Max."

"Who is Max?"

"My mother."

"Thy mother, and thee calls her Max?"

"I always have."

"But it is not respectful, is it?"

"No, but I don't respect her much."

"Doesn't thee?"--calmly.

"No, you can't"--earnestly.

"And what does thee call thy father?"

"Wally."

Mrs. Benjamin smiled. Here was all the clue she needed to the kind of parents Isabelle possessed.

"It may have been considered precocious, when thee was little, to call them so. But if I were in thy place, I would not do it now. It gives the wrong impression of thy manners. I think thee has very pretty manners,"

she added.

Isabelle flushed with pleasure.

"You see, Max--my mother--doesn't really care where I am, or what I do, so long as I'm not in her way, so I don't know what to write her."

"Couldn't thee write thy father, then?"