The Lilac Lady Part 20

"It's Elspeth!" cried Peace, first to find her voice.

"Glen, where's Glen?" was all the frantic mother could gasp as she stood tottering and dripping in the doorway.

"Ma-ma," lisped the little runaway, struggling down from Aunt Pen's lap, where he had been cuddling, and running into Elizabeth's arms.

"Peace, why did you take him without saying a word?" she reproached, sinking into the nearest chair, and hugging her small son close to her breast.

"I didn't--" Peace began.

"I think he must have run away," volunteered the Lilac Lady, staring fixedly at Elizabeth's face with almost frightened eyes. "He squirmed through the hedge while I was alone in the garden. I had not seen the storm approaching, and it broke before I could call Peace or--"

At the sound of the sweet voice, Elizabeth had abruptly risen to her feet, and after one searching glance at the white face among the cushions, cried out with girlish glee, "Myra! Can it be that Peace's Lilac Lady is my dear old chum?"

"You are the same darling Beth!" cried the lame girl hysterically, clinging to the wet hand outstretched to hers. "Why didn't I guess it before? Oh, I have wanted you _so_ often--but I never dreamed of finding you here. And to think I have refused all this while to let Peace bring you!"

"No, don't think about that. Her desire is accomplished, however it came about--and you are going to let me stay?"

"I would keep you with me always if I could. I have been learning Peace's philosophy and find it very--"

"Peaceful?" They laughed together, and in that laugh sounded the doom of the hedges which Peace had lamented so long.

CHAPTER IX

GIUSEPPE NICOLI AND THE MONKEY

The next morning dawned bright and clear and cool, and Peace, hurrying to school with her nose buried in a great bunch of early roses from the stone house, pranced gaily down the hill chanting under her breath, "Roses, roses, yellow, red and white, you are surely lovely, sweet and bright--another rhyme! They always come when I ain't trying to make 'em.

I wonder if I'll ever be a big poet like Longfellow was. It must be nice to have folks learn the things you write and speak 'em at concerts and school exercises like I'm going to do his 'Children's Hour' next Friday.

I've got it so I can say it backwards almost. Elizabeth says I know it perfectly. I hope Miss Peyton will think the same way. She is lots harder to please and I 'most never can do anything to suit her."

She sighed dolefully, for her ludicrous mistakes and blunt remarks were the bane of her new teacher's methodical life, and many an hour she had been kept after school as a punishment for her unruly tongue.

Unfortunately, Miss Peyton belonged to that great army of teachers who teach because they must, and not because they love the work. To be sure, she was most just and impartial in her treatment of the fifty scholars under her supervision, but, possessed of about as much imagination as a cat, she failed to a.n.a.lyze or understand the dispositions of her charges; and well-meaning Peace was usually in disgrace.

But her sunny nature could not stay unhappy long, and as she thrust her small nose deeper among the fragrant blossoms, she smilingly added, "I guess she'll like these roses, anyway. They are the prettiest I ever saw, even in greenhouses. There goes the first bell. I 'xpected to be there early this morning, but likely Annie Simms has beat me again.

Well, I don't care, there is only one more week of school and then vacation--and p'raps I can go home. Why, what a crowd there is on the walk! I wonder if someone is hurt again. Where can the princ.i.p.al be?"

She broke into a run, forgetful of her cherished bouquet, and dashed heedlessly across the school-grounds to the group of excited, shouting boys and girls, gathered around the tallest linden, throwing stones and missiles of all sorts up into the branches at some object which Peace could not see. But as she drew near, she could hear a queer, distressed chattering, which reminded her of the monkeys in the park zoo, and turning to one of her mates, she demanded, "What is it the boys have got treed there?"

"A monkey."

"A monkey?" shrieked Peace in real surprise. "Where did they get him?"

"I guess he b'longs to a hand-organ man. He's dressed in funny little pants and a red cap. Thad DePugh found him on his way to school and tried to catch him, but he run up the tree."

"And you stand there without saying a word and let them stone a poor little helpless monkey!"

"It don't b'long to me," muttered the child, angered by the indignant flash of the brown eyes and the scathing rebuke which seemed directed against her alone. "Anyway, I ain't stoning it."

"You ain't helping, either. Let me through here!" She pushed and elbowed her way into the midst of the throng and boldly confronted the ringleaders of the tormentors, screaming in protest, "Don't you throw another stone, you big bullies! Ain't you ashamed of yourself, trying to kill that poor little thing!"

"We ain't trying to kill it," retorted the nearest chap, pausing with his arm uplifted ready to pitch another pebble.

"You mind your own business!" growled another. "This monkey isn't yours.

We're trying to make it come down so we can catch it."

"You'll quit throwing things at it, or I'll tell Miss Curtis."

"Tattle-tale, tattle-tale!" mocked the throng, and another handful of rocks flew up among the branches.

"O-h-h-h-h!" shrieked Peace, beside herself with rage. "You d'serve to have the stuffing whaled out of you for that!"

Flinging aside the treasured roses, she seized the biggest boy by the hair and jerked him mercilessly back and forth across the yard, while he sought in vain to loosen the supple fingers, and bawled loudly for help.

"Teacher, teacher! Miss Curtis, oh teacher!" shouted the excited children; and at these sounds of strife from the playgrounds, the princ.i.p.al and half a dozen of her staff rushed out of the building to quell the riot. But even then Peace did not release her grip on the lad's thick topknot.

Pulled forcibly from her victim by the long-suffering Miss Peyton, she collapsed in the middle of the walk and sobbed convulsively, while the rest of the scholars huddled around in scared silence, eager to see what punishment was to be meted out to this small offender, for it was a great disgrace at Chestnut School to be caught fighting.

The grave-faced princ.i.p.al looked from the pitiful heap of misery at her feet to the blubbering bully who had retreated to a safe distance and stood ruefully rubbing his smarting cranium, minus several tufts of hair; and though inwardly smiling at the spectacle, she demanded sternly, "Peace Greenfield, aren't you ashamed of yourself for fighting Thad--"

"Yes," hiccoughed Peace with amazing promptness and candor; "I'm terribly ashamed to think I _touched_ him--he's so dirty. But I ain't half as ashamed of _myself_ as I am of him."

Even Miss Peyton caught her breath in dismay. But the princ.i.p.al had not forgotten her own childhood days, and being still a girl at heart, and secretly in sympathy with the small maid on the ground, she only said, "Explain yourself, Peace."

"It ain't half as bad for a little girl like me to fight a big bully like him, as it is for a big bully like him to fight a little monkey--"

"I wasn't fighting the monkey," sullenly muttered the boy, hanging his head in shame.

"You were stoning him, and he couldn't hit back, so there!"

"What monkey?" demanded the princ.i.p.al, glancing swiftly around the yard for any evidence of such a creature.

A dozen hands pointed toward the linden tree, and one small voice piped, "He's up there!"

"A real monkey?"

"Yes, dressed up in hand-organ pants," Peace explained, scrambling to her feet and peering up among the thick leaves for a glimpse of the frightened animal, which had ceased its wild chattering and sat huddled close against the tree trunk almost within reach. "See it? Poor little Jocko, I won't hurt you!" She stretched out her hands at the same moment that unknowingly she had spoken its name, and to the intense amazement of teachers and pupils, the tiny, trembling creature unhesitatingly dropped upon her shoulder, threw its claw-like arms about her neck and hid its face in her curls.

"Whose monkey is it?" gently asked Miss Curtis, breaking the silence which fell upon the group watching the strange sight.

"I never saw it before," Peace answered.

"But you called it by name," chorused the children, crowding closer about her.

"That was just a guess. There's a story in our reader about Jocko, and I happened to think of it. I didn't know it was this monkey's name."