What Katy Did at School Part 8

They were half way across the common before Miss Jane noticed that everybody was shaking with stifled laughter, except Rose, who walked along demurely, apparently unconscious that there was any thing to laugh at. Miss Jane looked sharply from one to another for a moment, then stopped short and exclaimed, "Rosamond Redding! how dare you?"

"What is it ma'am?" asked Rose, with the face of a lamb.

"Your bath towel! your sponge!" gasped Miss Jane.

"Yes, ma'am, I have them all," replied the audacious Rose, putting her hand to her hat. There, to be sure, was the long crash towel, hanging down behind like a veil, while the sponge was fastened on one side like a great c.o.c.kade; and in front appeared a cake of pink soap, neatly pinned into the middle of a black velvet bow.

Miss Jane seized Rose, and removed these ornaments in a twinkling.

"We shall see what Mrs. Florence thinks of this conduct," she grimly remarked. Then, dropping the soap and sponge in her own pocket, she made Rose walk beside her, as if she were a criminal in custody.

The bath-house was a neat place, with eight small rooms, well supplied with hot and cold water. Katy would have found her bath very nice, had it not been for the thought of the walk home. They must look so absurd, she reflected, with their sponges and damp towels.

Miss Jane was as good as her word. After dinner, Rose was sent for by Mrs. Florence, and had an interview of two hours with her: she came out with red eyes, and shut herself into her room with a disconsolate bang. Before long, however, she revived sufficiently to tap on the drawers and push through a note with the following words:--

"My heart is broken!

"R.R."

Clover hastened in to comfort her. Rose was sitting on the floor, with a very clean pocket-handkerchief in her hand. She wept, and put her head against Clover's knee.

"I suppose I'm the nastiest girl in the world," she said. "Mrs.

Florence thinks so. She said I was an evil influence in the school.

Wasn't that un--kind?" with a little sob.

"I meant to be so good this term," she went on; "but what's the use?

A codfish might as well try to play the piano! It was always so, even when I was a baby. Sylvia says I have got a little fiend inside of me.

Do you believe I have? Is it that makes me so horrid?"

Clover purred over her. She could not bear to have Rose feel badly.

"Wasn't Miss Jane funny?" went on Rose, with a sudden twinkle; "and did you see Berry, and Alfred Seccomb?"

"No: where were they?"

"Close to us, standing by the fence. All the time Miss Jane was unpinning the towel, they were splitting their sides, and Berry made such a face at me that I nearly laughed out. That boy has a perfect genius for faces. He used to frighten Sylvia and me into fits, when we were little tots, up here on visits."

"Then you knew him before you came to school?"

"Oh dear, yes! I know all the Hillsover boys. We used to make mud pies together. They're grown up now, most of 'em, and in college; and when we meet, we're very dignified, and say, 'Miss Redding,' and 'Mr. Seccomb,' and 'Mr. Searles;' but we're just as good friends as ever. When I go to take tea with Mrs. Seccomb, Alfred always invites Berry to drop in, and we have the greatest fun. Mrs. Florence won't let me go this term, though, I guess, she's so mad about the towel."

Katy was quite relieved when Clover reported this conversation. Rose, for all her wickedness, seemed to be a little lady. Katy did not like to cla.s.s her among the girls who flirted with students whom they did not know.

It was wonderful how soon they all settled down, and became accustomed to their new life. Before six weeks were over, Katy and Clover felt as if they had lived at Hillsover for years. This was partly because there was so much to do. Nothing makes time fly like having every moment filled, and every hour set apart for a distinct employment.

They made several friends, chief among whom were Ellen Gray and Louisa Agnew. This last intimacy Lilly resented highly, and seemed to consider as an affront to herself. With no one, however, was Katy so intimate as Clover was with Rose Red. This cost Katy some jealous pangs at first. She was so used to considering Clover her own exclusive property that it was not easy to share her with another; and she had occasional fits of feeling resentful, and injured, and left out.

These were but momentary, however. Katy was too healthy of mind to let unkind feelings grow, and by and by she grew fond of Rose and Rose of her, so that in the end the sisters share their friend as they did other nice things, and neither of them was jealous of the other.

But, charming as she was, a certain price had to be paid for the pleasure of intimacy with Rose. Her overflowing spirits, and "the little fiend inside her," were always provoking sc.r.a.pes, in which her friends were apt to be more or less involved. She was very pen intent and afflicted after these sc.r.a.pes; but it didn't make a bit of difference: the next time she was just as naughty as ever.

"What are you?" said Katy, one day, meeting her in the hall with a heap of black shawls and ap.r.o.ns on her arm.

"Hush!" whispered Rose, mysteriously, "don't say a word. Senator Brown is dead--our senator, you know. I'm going to put my window into mourning for him, that's all. It's a proper token of respect."

Two hours later, Mrs. Nipson, walking sedately across the common, noticed quite a group of students, in the president's yard, looking up at the Nunnery. She drew nearer. They were admiring Rose's window, hung with black, and decorated with a photograph of the deceased senator, suspended in the middle of a wreath of weeping- willow. Of course she hurried upstairs, and tore down the shawls and ap.r.o.ns; and, equally of course, Rose had a lecture and a mark; but, dear me! what good did it do? The next day but one, as Katy and Clover sat together in silent study hour, their lower drawer was pushed open very noiselessly and gently, till it came out entirely, and lay on the floor, and in the aperture thus formed appeared Roses's saucy face flushed with mischief. She was crawling through from her own room!

"Such fun!" she whispered; "I never thought of this before! We can have parties in study hours, and all sorts of things."

"Oh, go back, Rosy!" whispered Clover in agonized entreaty, though laughing all the time.

"Go back? Not at all! I'm coming in," answered Rose, pulling herself through a little farther. But at that moment the door opened: there stood Miss Jane! She had caught the buzz of voices, as she pa.s.sed in the hall, and had entered to see what was going on.

Rose, dreadfully frightened, made a rapid movement to withdraw. But the s.p.a.ce was narrow, and she had wedged herself, and could move neither backward nor forward. She had to submit to being helped through by Miss Jane, in a series of pulls, while Katy and Clover sat by, not daring to laugh or to offer a.s.sistance. When Rose was on her feet, Miss Jane released her with a final shake, which she seemed unable to refrain from giving.

"Go to your room," she said; "I shall report all of you young ladies for this flagrant act of disobedience."

Rose went, and in two minutes the drawer, which Miss Jane had replaced, opened again, and there was this note:--

"If I'm never heard of more, give my love to my family, and mention how I died. I forgive my enemies; and leave Clover my band bracelet.

"My blessings on you both.

"With the deepest regard, "Your afflicted friend, R. R."

Mrs. Florence was very angry on this occasion, and would listen to no explanations, but gave Katy and Clover a "disobedience mark" also.

This was very unfair, and Rose felt dreadfully about it. She begged and entreated; but Mrs. Florence only replied: "There is blame on both sides, I have no doubt."

"She's entirely changed from what she used to be," declared Rose. "I don't know what's the matter; I don't like her half so much as I did."

The truth was, that Mrs. Florence had secretly determined to give up her connection with the school at midsummer; and, regarding it now rather as Mrs. Nipson's school than her own, she took no pains to study character or mete out justice carefully among scholars with whom she was not likely to have much to do.

CHAPTER VI. THE S. S. U. C.

It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon; and Clover, having finished her practising, dusting, and mending, had settle herself in No. 6 for a couple of hours of quiet enjoyment. Every thing was in beautiful order to meet Miss Jane's inspecting eye; and Clover, as she sat in the rocking chair, writing-case in lap, looked extremely cosy and comfortable.

A half-finished letter to Elsie lay in the writing-case; but Clover felt lazy, and instead of writing was looking out of window in a dreamy way, to where Berry Searles and some other young men were playing ball in the yard below. She was not thinking of them or of any thing else in particular. A vague sense of pleasant idleness possessed her, and it was like the breaking of a dream when the door opened and Katy came in, not quietly after her wont, but with a certain haste and indignant rustle as if vexed by something. When she saw Clover at the window, she cried out hastily, "O Clover, don't'!"

"Don't what?" asked Clover, without turning her head.

"Don't sit there looking at those boys."

"Why? why not? They can't see me. The blinds are shut."

"No matter for that. It's just as bad as if they could see you. Don't do it. I can't bear to have you."

"Well, I won't then," said Clover good-humoredly, facing round with her back to the window. "I wasn't looking at them either,--not exactly. I was thinking about Elsie and John, and wondering--But what's the matter, Katy? What makes you fire up so about it? You've watched the ball-playing yourself plenty of times."