Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven.Term-Holiday.Flora and Kate and Ethel were sitting with their classmates discussing the day’s work, and Pixie O’Shaughnessy had drawn her stool beside them, and was putting in a remark at every possible opportunity. It made her feel grown-up and important to join in the conferences of the older girls, and though in words they might say, “Run away, Pixie!” it generally happened that someone moved to the side of her chair to make an extra place, or that an arm stretched out to encircle the tiny waist. Even sixth-form girls like to be amused occasionally as if they were ordinary mortals, and Pixie was welcomed because she made them laugh and forget their trials and troubles, in the shape of Latin and Euclid and German idioms which refused to be unravelled. Two or three of the older pupils were going in for the Cambridge Examination at Christmas, and all were looking forward to the school exams at the end of the term, so that anxiety was heavy upon them.“My brain feels like jelly! Itwon’twork. I shall be getting softening of the brain at this rate!” sighed Flora, rubbing her cheeks up and down between her bands until she looked like a fat indiarubber doll. “I keep mixing things up until I don’t seem to have a clear idea left, and my mother has set her heart on my taking a good place. She will look sad if I come out bottom, and I do hate and detest people looking sad! I would far rather they scolded, and had done with it!”“My people don’t worry their heads about lessons. They sent me to school because they think it polishes a girl, and rubs off the angles, don’t you know!” said Lottie, with an air. She was the richest girl in the school, who took all the extras, and put her name down for every concert and entertainment, without thinking of the expense. Her parents had a house in town to which they came regularly every spring, during which season Lottie’s friends received many delightful invitations. She had unlimited pocket-money also, and was lavish in gifts to those who happened to be in her favour, a fact which a certain number of girls found it impossible to banish from their minds; and thus Lottie held a little court over which she reigned as queen, while the more earnest-minded of the pupils adored Margaret, and would hear no one compared to the sweet “school-mother.” Clara was a Margaret-worshipper, so she felt in duty bound to snub Lottie on this as on every possible occasion.“I don’t see much polish aboutyou!” she retorted brutally. “And it’s ridiculous to come to school at all, if you don’t mean to work. If it’s only ‘pruins and prism’ you want, why didn’t you go to board with a dancing-mistress, and practise how to come in and out of a room, and bow to your friends, and cut your old schoolfellows when you meet them in the road? You’d find it useful, my dear!”The last sentence was a deliberate hit, for a former pupil had reported that, during a visit to a well-known watering-place, when she herself was returning unkempt and sandy from a cockling expedition, she had encountered Lottie walking on the parade with a number of fashionable visitors, and that, after one hasty glance in her direction, Miss Lottie had become so wonderfully interested in what was going on at the other side of the road that she altogether forgot to return her bow. Needless to say, Lottie had been reminded more than once of this incident, so that even Pixie, the newest comer, was familiar with its incidents, though she could not bring herself to believe in such deliberate snobbery. To-day, as Lottie flushed, and Margaret looked a pained reproach, it was Pixie who rushed to the rescue, wriggling about in her seat, and clasping and unclasping her hands in the earnestness of her defence.“Clara Montagu, you’ve no business accusing Lottie! You weren’t there, so you can’t tell! Perhaps the sun was in her eyes. You can’t see a man from a woman when it’s shining full in your face, though they may see you clear enough, and believe you’re shamming. Or perhaps the dust was blowing. I’ve been blind meself with dust before now, and come into the house looking as though I’d been crying for weeks. Why should she pretend not to know a friend—least of all when she’d been cockling? ’Deed, I’d have been more affectionate than ever, in the hope she’d say, ‘Help yourself, me dear! Lend me your handkerchief, and I’ll give ye a nice little bundle to take home for your tea!’”The Margaret-girls gave a simultaneous shriek of laughter at the idea of Miss Lottie carrying a handkerchief full of cockles, and even the Lottie-girls smiled approvingly at the little speaker, for was she not advocating the position of their chief? Flora nodded encouragingly across the hearth and cried, “Good for you, Pixie! Never listen to second-hand stories against your friends!” And Kate added meaningly, “Go on believing in human nature as long as you can, my dear. You’re young yet. When you are as old as I am it will be time to open your eyes. But to go back to the last subject but one, don’t you give way to nerves, girls, and begin worrying about the exams already. I’ve noticed that just about the middle of the term there always comes a ‘discouragement stage’ to anyone who is anxious to do well. The first energy with which one begins work has worn off, and as it is too soon for the final spurt, there comes a dull, flat time, when one worries and frets and gets down in the lowest depths of dumps. I spoke about it at home, and my father says every worker feels the same—artists when they are painting pictures, and authors when they are writing books. They have an idea, and set to work, all delight and excitement, believing that they are going to do the best thing they have ever done. For a little time all goes well, and then they begin to grow discouraged and worried, and think they might as well give it up at once, for it is going to be a dismal failure. They knowsomethingis wrong, but they can’t see what it is, and they mope about, and don’t know what to try next. Father told me a story about Millais, the man who painted ‘Bubbles,’ you know, and heaps of other beautiful things. He was so miserable about a picture once that he grew quite ill worrying about it. His wife tried to persuade him to leave it alone for a few days, and then take a rest; but no, he would not hear of it, so one fine day, when he was out, she just took the law into her own hands and had it carried down and hidden in the cellar. When he came home he went straight to the studio, and—my dears! I am glad I didn’t happen to be in the house, that’s all. I know what my father is like when he can’t find a clothes-brush, or someone has moved the matches out of the dressing-room. Millais raged about like a wild animal, but his wife was quite firm and determined, and wouldn’t tell him where it was for several days. He was obliged to go out and interest himself in other ways, and when he was quite well again she had the picture brought up, and he simply looked at it and laughed. He knew at once what was wrong, and how to put it right.”“I say,” cried Flora eagerly, “do tell that story to Miss Phipps! She might give us a week’s holiday and send us to see the sights of London! Do, Kate! Get it up in French and tell it to-night at tea. You don’t know how much good it might do!”“It’s a very good story, but I fail to see where the moral comes in. It hardly applies to us, I think,” said Clara, in her superior manner, and Kate breathlessly vindicated her position.“Yes, it does—of course it does. It shows that this anxious stage is a natural thing which all workers have to live through, and even if we can’t leave off lessons altogether, we can help ourselves by not giving way to nerves, but going steadily on, knowing that we shall feel all right again in a few days. Besides, there’s the Exeat coming,—that will make a nice break.”“I never worry about lessons, do I?” cried Pixie, pluming herself complacently. The part of Kate’s lecture which had dealt with over-anxiety about work had appealed with special force to one listener at least, and Pixie was delighted to find that she was free from failing in one direction at least. “I never did. Miss Minnitt—that’s the one who used to teach us—she said I never paid any attention at all. There was one day she was questioning me about grammar. ‘Pixie O’Shaughnessy,’ she says, ‘you’ve been over this one page until it’s worn transparent. For pity’s sake,’ she says, ‘be done with it, and get on to something fresh. Let me see if you can remember to-day what I taught you yesterday afternoon. How many kinds of verbs are there?’ ‘There are two,’ I said, and with that she was all smiles and noddings. ‘So there are, now. You’re quite right. And what will be their names?’ ‘Verb and adverb,’ says I, quite haughty; and the howl that went out of her you might have heard from Cork to Galway! That was all the grammar she’d managed to teachme!”“You don’t know very much more now, do you, chicken?” said Margaret, bending her head so that her cheek rested upon the rough, dark head. “Just bring your books to me any time you get puzzled, and I’ll try to make it clear. Talking of the term-holiday, girls, it is time we began to make our plans. How many of you are going out? Lottie, are you? Clara? Kate? Pixie? We had better find out first how many will be here.”Clara had had hopes that the maiden lady with the appetite would rise to the occasion, but, alas! she had betaken herself to stay with a relative, Pixie was sure that Jack could not spare time to have her for a whole day, and besides, she was going to have tea with him the Saturday before. All the girls seemed fated to spend the holiday at school save only the two sisters, Mabel and Violet, who were to be entertained by a kind aunt, and to choose their own entertainment for the afternoon, and Lottie, who was fortunate as usual.“I am doubly engaged for the evening!” she announced with a flourish. “I wrote home to my people about the holiday, and mother asked some friends to have me for part of the day. They live in a regular mansion—as big as two or three houses like this rolled into one, and they know all sorts of grand people! I am going to dinner, and it’s most exciting, for I don’t know whom I may meet!”“The Prince and Princess of Wales are at Sandringham! What a pity!” sighed Kate, the sarcastic. “It’s so awfully trying to come down to Lords and Ladies, don’t you know! You will hardly trouble to put on your best dress, I should think. The pea-green satin with the pink flounces will be good enough for them!”The Margaret-girls laughed hysterically at this exhibition of wit, but Lottie’s followers shot indignant glances across the room, and Pixie asked innocently—“Have you got a pea-green satin, Lottie? And pink flounces to it? Youwillbe fine! I have a little pink fan out of a cracker last year, when there was company at the Chase. I’ll lend it to you if you like, and then you’ll be all complete!”“Thank you, Pixie O’Shaughnessy; you are a kind little girl. I shan’t want it this time, but I’ll be sure to remind you when I do,” replied Lottie, with unusual warmth of manner, for the child’s sincerity had touched a soft spot in her vain heart, and she had an increasing desire to include her in the number of her admirers. Later on, when they were left alone together at the end of the schoolroom, she put her arm round the tiny waist, and said caressingly—“Talking of party dresses, what are you going to wear yourself on Tuesday evening? You have to put on your best things, you know, just as if you were going out?”“WillI?” Pixie looked surprised, but absolutely unperturbed. “But I haven’t a rag to my back but the black you see every night! Bridgie said, ‘It’s not likely you’ll be visiting at Court until ye’re education’s finished, so this old grenadine will see you through until the ship comes home from its next voyage. It’s gone a long way this time,’ says she, ‘and between you and me, I expect the storms will swamp it, but I’ve taken the best pieces out of my old dress and Esmeralda’s, and, barring the darn on the back seam, I defy ye to tell it from new!’ So that’s all I’ve got, as I told you before, and, party or no party, it will have to do.”Lottie looked at her in horrified sympathy, but not a sigh of regret clouded the beaming face; the head was tilting to and fro in its usual complacent fashion, the shabby little flounce of a skirt was whisking to and fro. Such a depth of poverty seemed incomprehensible to the child of wealthy parents, and she was moved to an unusual desire to help. Never before had she been known to lend one of her possessions to another girl, but now she said quite eagerly—“I have a lace collar, Pixie—a very pretty collar—I’ll lend it to you, and a white ribbon for your hair! It would lighten your dress wonderfully; and there is a brooch too, and a little gold bangle.”She paused, looking inquiringly to see the result of her offer, for one could never tell how it would be received. Some girls might be pleased, others might consider it almost an insult, and she would be sorry to offend the funny little thing. But Pixie was not offended. She had too much of the O’Shaughnessy blood in her veins to object to have things made easy for her at the expense of another, and she felt no embarrassment in taking the good things that came in her way.“Oh, ye darlin’!” she cried rapturously. “Will ye lend them to me, really? Think of me now with a bracelet on me arm, and a brooch at me neck! They wouldn’t be knowing me at home. I wish to-day was Tuesday; and what shall we do with ourselves all the hours before it’s time to dress up?”Lottie referred the question to Margaret, who, as head girl, had been busy thinking out plans for the enjoyment of her friends.“I thought of asking if we might go to see the Cinematograph at the Polytechnic,” she replied. “Miss Phipps promised to take us some day, and if we could do some shopping first, and have tea afterwards, it would be a delightful way of spending the afternoon. There is one thing that we must buy while we have the chance, and that’s a present for Fraulein. Her birthday is next week, and she is such a kind old dear that she deserves something nice. I want at least a shilling from everyone, and as much more as they can afford. I wonder what we had better get?”“I know what she would love! A scent-bottle for her dressing-table like the one Mademoiselle has. We could not afford one quite so good, but we could get a very nice size for about two pounds. One day when I was in Mademoiselle’s room, Fraulein came in and took up the bottle, and began admiring it, and saying how nice it was to get presents which were good to look at, as well as to use. She has not many pretty things—poor Fraulein!—and I think she would really enjoy a taste of luxury. Mademoiselle has her initials engraven on the glass, but that would be too expensive for us. We can have them on the stopper instead.”“And who gave Mademoiselle her bottle? Was it someone here?” asked Pixie curiously, whereupon Kate tossed her head with an air of exaggerated dismay.“My dear, how can you? Don’t say that to Mademoiselle, I implore you! She would have a fit.Weare all commoners, and English commoners at that, and the lady who gave her that precious bottle was Madame la Marquise de Something or Other, the mother of her beloved pupil Isoult Andrée Adèle Marie Thérèse—the most perfect, and beautiful, and clever, and amiablejeune fillethat was ever created!” Kate paused, hitched one shoulder to her ear, spread out her hands, and elevated her eyebrows in ridiculous mimicry of Mademoiselle’s mannerisms. “Did she evare neglect her work?Jamais, nevare! Did she evare forget that she was ajeune fille, and be’ave like a vild, rough boy?Jamais,jamais! Was she evare like these Engleesh—rude, impairtinent, disobedient?Mais non! Always the same—cette ange, the most wise, the most amiable! And when she has finished her education and made herdébût, to be the most beautiful and admired wherever she has gone, she has vept—vept, I tell you, to sayadieuto her beloved Mademoiselle! And she has given her a chain for her neck, and Madame la Marquise that beautiful ’ansome botelle. Really, Pixie, you are behind the times if you don’t know about Isoult. Just turn Mademoiselle on to her next time you are with her on the walk, and you won’t have to exert yourself any more. She will sing her praises until you come in.”“I will,” said Pixie sturdily. “And I’ll see that bottle, too. I must see that bottle. I’ll go into Mademoiselle’s room next time I have a chance, and have a good look at it all to myself!”The girls smiled, but took little note of a determination which seemed natural enough under the circumstances. A week afterwards they remembered it with very different feelings, and Pixie’s own words were brought up in judgment against her.

Flora and Kate and Ethel were sitting with their classmates discussing the day’s work, and Pixie O’Shaughnessy had drawn her stool beside them, and was putting in a remark at every possible opportunity. It made her feel grown-up and important to join in the conferences of the older girls, and though in words they might say, “Run away, Pixie!” it generally happened that someone moved to the side of her chair to make an extra place, or that an arm stretched out to encircle the tiny waist. Even sixth-form girls like to be amused occasionally as if they were ordinary mortals, and Pixie was welcomed because she made them laugh and forget their trials and troubles, in the shape of Latin and Euclid and German idioms which refused to be unravelled. Two or three of the older pupils were going in for the Cambridge Examination at Christmas, and all were looking forward to the school exams at the end of the term, so that anxiety was heavy upon them.

“My brain feels like jelly! Itwon’twork. I shall be getting softening of the brain at this rate!” sighed Flora, rubbing her cheeks up and down between her bands until she looked like a fat indiarubber doll. “I keep mixing things up until I don’t seem to have a clear idea left, and my mother has set her heart on my taking a good place. She will look sad if I come out bottom, and I do hate and detest people looking sad! I would far rather they scolded, and had done with it!”

“My people don’t worry their heads about lessons. They sent me to school because they think it polishes a girl, and rubs off the angles, don’t you know!” said Lottie, with an air. She was the richest girl in the school, who took all the extras, and put her name down for every concert and entertainment, without thinking of the expense. Her parents had a house in town to which they came regularly every spring, during which season Lottie’s friends received many delightful invitations. She had unlimited pocket-money also, and was lavish in gifts to those who happened to be in her favour, a fact which a certain number of girls found it impossible to banish from their minds; and thus Lottie held a little court over which she reigned as queen, while the more earnest-minded of the pupils adored Margaret, and would hear no one compared to the sweet “school-mother.” Clara was a Margaret-worshipper, so she felt in duty bound to snub Lottie on this as on every possible occasion.

“I don’t see much polish aboutyou!” she retorted brutally. “And it’s ridiculous to come to school at all, if you don’t mean to work. If it’s only ‘pruins and prism’ you want, why didn’t you go to board with a dancing-mistress, and practise how to come in and out of a room, and bow to your friends, and cut your old schoolfellows when you meet them in the road? You’d find it useful, my dear!”

The last sentence was a deliberate hit, for a former pupil had reported that, during a visit to a well-known watering-place, when she herself was returning unkempt and sandy from a cockling expedition, she had encountered Lottie walking on the parade with a number of fashionable visitors, and that, after one hasty glance in her direction, Miss Lottie had become so wonderfully interested in what was going on at the other side of the road that she altogether forgot to return her bow. Needless to say, Lottie had been reminded more than once of this incident, so that even Pixie, the newest comer, was familiar with its incidents, though she could not bring herself to believe in such deliberate snobbery. To-day, as Lottie flushed, and Margaret looked a pained reproach, it was Pixie who rushed to the rescue, wriggling about in her seat, and clasping and unclasping her hands in the earnestness of her defence.

“Clara Montagu, you’ve no business accusing Lottie! You weren’t there, so you can’t tell! Perhaps the sun was in her eyes. You can’t see a man from a woman when it’s shining full in your face, though they may see you clear enough, and believe you’re shamming. Or perhaps the dust was blowing. I’ve been blind meself with dust before now, and come into the house looking as though I’d been crying for weeks. Why should she pretend not to know a friend—least of all when she’d been cockling? ’Deed, I’d have been more affectionate than ever, in the hope she’d say, ‘Help yourself, me dear! Lend me your handkerchief, and I’ll give ye a nice little bundle to take home for your tea!’”

The Margaret-girls gave a simultaneous shriek of laughter at the idea of Miss Lottie carrying a handkerchief full of cockles, and even the Lottie-girls smiled approvingly at the little speaker, for was she not advocating the position of their chief? Flora nodded encouragingly across the hearth and cried, “Good for you, Pixie! Never listen to second-hand stories against your friends!” And Kate added meaningly, “Go on believing in human nature as long as you can, my dear. You’re young yet. When you are as old as I am it will be time to open your eyes. But to go back to the last subject but one, don’t you give way to nerves, girls, and begin worrying about the exams already. I’ve noticed that just about the middle of the term there always comes a ‘discouragement stage’ to anyone who is anxious to do well. The first energy with which one begins work has worn off, and as it is too soon for the final spurt, there comes a dull, flat time, when one worries and frets and gets down in the lowest depths of dumps. I spoke about it at home, and my father says every worker feels the same—artists when they are painting pictures, and authors when they are writing books. They have an idea, and set to work, all delight and excitement, believing that they are going to do the best thing they have ever done. For a little time all goes well, and then they begin to grow discouraged and worried, and think they might as well give it up at once, for it is going to be a dismal failure. They knowsomethingis wrong, but they can’t see what it is, and they mope about, and don’t know what to try next. Father told me a story about Millais, the man who painted ‘Bubbles,’ you know, and heaps of other beautiful things. He was so miserable about a picture once that he grew quite ill worrying about it. His wife tried to persuade him to leave it alone for a few days, and then take a rest; but no, he would not hear of it, so one fine day, when he was out, she just took the law into her own hands and had it carried down and hidden in the cellar. When he came home he went straight to the studio, and—my dears! I am glad I didn’t happen to be in the house, that’s all. I know what my father is like when he can’t find a clothes-brush, or someone has moved the matches out of the dressing-room. Millais raged about like a wild animal, but his wife was quite firm and determined, and wouldn’t tell him where it was for several days. He was obliged to go out and interest himself in other ways, and when he was quite well again she had the picture brought up, and he simply looked at it and laughed. He knew at once what was wrong, and how to put it right.”

“I say,” cried Flora eagerly, “do tell that story to Miss Phipps! She might give us a week’s holiday and send us to see the sights of London! Do, Kate! Get it up in French and tell it to-night at tea. You don’t know how much good it might do!”

“It’s a very good story, but I fail to see where the moral comes in. It hardly applies to us, I think,” said Clara, in her superior manner, and Kate breathlessly vindicated her position.

“Yes, it does—of course it does. It shows that this anxious stage is a natural thing which all workers have to live through, and even if we can’t leave off lessons altogether, we can help ourselves by not giving way to nerves, but going steadily on, knowing that we shall feel all right again in a few days. Besides, there’s the Exeat coming,—that will make a nice break.”

“I never worry about lessons, do I?” cried Pixie, pluming herself complacently. The part of Kate’s lecture which had dealt with over-anxiety about work had appealed with special force to one listener at least, and Pixie was delighted to find that she was free from failing in one direction at least. “I never did. Miss Minnitt—that’s the one who used to teach us—she said I never paid any attention at all. There was one day she was questioning me about grammar. ‘Pixie O’Shaughnessy,’ she says, ‘you’ve been over this one page until it’s worn transparent. For pity’s sake,’ she says, ‘be done with it, and get on to something fresh. Let me see if you can remember to-day what I taught you yesterday afternoon. How many kinds of verbs are there?’ ‘There are two,’ I said, and with that she was all smiles and noddings. ‘So there are, now. You’re quite right. And what will be their names?’ ‘Verb and adverb,’ says I, quite haughty; and the howl that went out of her you might have heard from Cork to Galway! That was all the grammar she’d managed to teachme!”

“You don’t know very much more now, do you, chicken?” said Margaret, bending her head so that her cheek rested upon the rough, dark head. “Just bring your books to me any time you get puzzled, and I’ll try to make it clear. Talking of the term-holiday, girls, it is time we began to make our plans. How many of you are going out? Lottie, are you? Clara? Kate? Pixie? We had better find out first how many will be here.”

Clara had had hopes that the maiden lady with the appetite would rise to the occasion, but, alas! she had betaken herself to stay with a relative, Pixie was sure that Jack could not spare time to have her for a whole day, and besides, she was going to have tea with him the Saturday before. All the girls seemed fated to spend the holiday at school save only the two sisters, Mabel and Violet, who were to be entertained by a kind aunt, and to choose their own entertainment for the afternoon, and Lottie, who was fortunate as usual.

“I am doubly engaged for the evening!” she announced with a flourish. “I wrote home to my people about the holiday, and mother asked some friends to have me for part of the day. They live in a regular mansion—as big as two or three houses like this rolled into one, and they know all sorts of grand people! I am going to dinner, and it’s most exciting, for I don’t know whom I may meet!”

“The Prince and Princess of Wales are at Sandringham! What a pity!” sighed Kate, the sarcastic. “It’s so awfully trying to come down to Lords and Ladies, don’t you know! You will hardly trouble to put on your best dress, I should think. The pea-green satin with the pink flounces will be good enough for them!”

The Margaret-girls laughed hysterically at this exhibition of wit, but Lottie’s followers shot indignant glances across the room, and Pixie asked innocently—“Have you got a pea-green satin, Lottie? And pink flounces to it? Youwillbe fine! I have a little pink fan out of a cracker last year, when there was company at the Chase. I’ll lend it to you if you like, and then you’ll be all complete!”

“Thank you, Pixie O’Shaughnessy; you are a kind little girl. I shan’t want it this time, but I’ll be sure to remind you when I do,” replied Lottie, with unusual warmth of manner, for the child’s sincerity had touched a soft spot in her vain heart, and she had an increasing desire to include her in the number of her admirers. Later on, when they were left alone together at the end of the schoolroom, she put her arm round the tiny waist, and said caressingly—

“Talking of party dresses, what are you going to wear yourself on Tuesday evening? You have to put on your best things, you know, just as if you were going out?”

“WillI?” Pixie looked surprised, but absolutely unperturbed. “But I haven’t a rag to my back but the black you see every night! Bridgie said, ‘It’s not likely you’ll be visiting at Court until ye’re education’s finished, so this old grenadine will see you through until the ship comes home from its next voyage. It’s gone a long way this time,’ says she, ‘and between you and me, I expect the storms will swamp it, but I’ve taken the best pieces out of my old dress and Esmeralda’s, and, barring the darn on the back seam, I defy ye to tell it from new!’ So that’s all I’ve got, as I told you before, and, party or no party, it will have to do.”

Lottie looked at her in horrified sympathy, but not a sigh of regret clouded the beaming face; the head was tilting to and fro in its usual complacent fashion, the shabby little flounce of a skirt was whisking to and fro. Such a depth of poverty seemed incomprehensible to the child of wealthy parents, and she was moved to an unusual desire to help. Never before had she been known to lend one of her possessions to another girl, but now she said quite eagerly—

“I have a lace collar, Pixie—a very pretty collar—I’ll lend it to you, and a white ribbon for your hair! It would lighten your dress wonderfully; and there is a brooch too, and a little gold bangle.”

She paused, looking inquiringly to see the result of her offer, for one could never tell how it would be received. Some girls might be pleased, others might consider it almost an insult, and she would be sorry to offend the funny little thing. But Pixie was not offended. She had too much of the O’Shaughnessy blood in her veins to object to have things made easy for her at the expense of another, and she felt no embarrassment in taking the good things that came in her way.

“Oh, ye darlin’!” she cried rapturously. “Will ye lend them to me, really? Think of me now with a bracelet on me arm, and a brooch at me neck! They wouldn’t be knowing me at home. I wish to-day was Tuesday; and what shall we do with ourselves all the hours before it’s time to dress up?”

Lottie referred the question to Margaret, who, as head girl, had been busy thinking out plans for the enjoyment of her friends.

“I thought of asking if we might go to see the Cinematograph at the Polytechnic,” she replied. “Miss Phipps promised to take us some day, and if we could do some shopping first, and have tea afterwards, it would be a delightful way of spending the afternoon. There is one thing that we must buy while we have the chance, and that’s a present for Fraulein. Her birthday is next week, and she is such a kind old dear that she deserves something nice. I want at least a shilling from everyone, and as much more as they can afford. I wonder what we had better get?”

“I know what she would love! A scent-bottle for her dressing-table like the one Mademoiselle has. We could not afford one quite so good, but we could get a very nice size for about two pounds. One day when I was in Mademoiselle’s room, Fraulein came in and took up the bottle, and began admiring it, and saying how nice it was to get presents which were good to look at, as well as to use. She has not many pretty things—poor Fraulein!—and I think she would really enjoy a taste of luxury. Mademoiselle has her initials engraven on the glass, but that would be too expensive for us. We can have them on the stopper instead.”

“And who gave Mademoiselle her bottle? Was it someone here?” asked Pixie curiously, whereupon Kate tossed her head with an air of exaggerated dismay.

“My dear, how can you? Don’t say that to Mademoiselle, I implore you! She would have a fit.Weare all commoners, and English commoners at that, and the lady who gave her that precious bottle was Madame la Marquise de Something or Other, the mother of her beloved pupil Isoult Andrée Adèle Marie Thérèse—the most perfect, and beautiful, and clever, and amiablejeune fillethat was ever created!” Kate paused, hitched one shoulder to her ear, spread out her hands, and elevated her eyebrows in ridiculous mimicry of Mademoiselle’s mannerisms. “Did she evare neglect her work?Jamais, nevare! Did she evare forget that she was ajeune fille, and be’ave like a vild, rough boy?Jamais,jamais! Was she evare like these Engleesh—rude, impairtinent, disobedient?Mais non! Always the same—cette ange, the most wise, the most amiable! And when she has finished her education and made herdébût, to be the most beautiful and admired wherever she has gone, she has vept—vept, I tell you, to sayadieuto her beloved Mademoiselle! And she has given her a chain for her neck, and Madame la Marquise that beautiful ’ansome botelle. Really, Pixie, you are behind the times if you don’t know about Isoult. Just turn Mademoiselle on to her next time you are with her on the walk, and you won’t have to exert yourself any more. She will sing her praises until you come in.”

“I will,” said Pixie sturdily. “And I’ll see that bottle, too. I must see that bottle. I’ll go into Mademoiselle’s room next time I have a chance, and have a good look at it all to myself!”

The girls smiled, but took little note of a determination which seemed natural enough under the circumstances. A week afterwards they remembered it with very different feelings, and Pixie’s own words were brought up in judgment against her.

Chapter Eight.Pixie in Trouble.It was already dark when the crocodile passed in at the gates of Holly House on its return from the expedition to town, and Miss Phipps gave instructions that the girls were to go straight to their rooms to dress for the evening. Full dress was the rule for the evenings of term-holiday, for even if nothing particular was going on, and no extra guests expected, it gave one a gala feeling to don a light frock, and gaze down upon one’s very best shoes and stockings. Before leaving for town in the morning, visits had been paid to the box-room to take the rarely-used splendours from their wrappings, and now they lay stretched out in all their glory on the narrow beds, white, blue, and pink, a very wealth of colour and luxury.Pixie O’Shaughnessy, having no adornment to do for herself, acted as lady’s-maid to her bedroom, with much satisfaction to her mistresses, and credit to herself. She brushed Kate’s hair until it was so smooth and flat as to be almost invisible from a front view; she tied Ethel’s sash, and the ribbon to match which confined the ends of her curls; and she fastened Flora’s dress, which was a matter of difficulty and time, for though it was let out regularly each holiday-time, it invariably grew too tight before it was needed again.“I can’t help it,” the poor thing protested miserably. “I don’t eat half as much as Ethel, and she’s as thin as a stick. It’s my fate! I was born fat, and I go on growing fatter and fatter all the time. I shall be a fat woman in a show, before I am done with it. It’s hard lines, for I should so love to be slim and willowy. That’s what the heroines are in books, and it makes me quite ill every time I read it. Nothing exciting ever happens to fat people! The thin ones get all the fun and excitement, and marry the nice man, while the poor fatty stays at home, and waits upon her hand and foot. Then she grows into an aunt, and takes charge of the nephews and nieces when they have fever or measles, or when the parents go abroad for a holiday. Everyone imposes upon her, just because she is fat!”“No, indeed, then, it is because she’s good-natured. Look at yourself now; you are always laughing!” declared Pixie soothingly. “Hold yer breath a single moment while I get the better of this hook. Ye’ll not need to curtsey too low, I’m thinking, or you’ll go off like a cracker! And the elegant dress that it is, too! I remember the night Bridgie went to her first ball, the Hunt Ball it was, over at Roskillie. It was me mother’s wedding-dress that she wore, and she looked like a picture in it, the darlin’! Me mother was for having it altered to be in the fashion, but me father says, ‘Leave it alone; you’ll spoil it if ye alter a stitch! It’s better than fashionable,’ he says, ‘it’s artistic, and fits the child like her own skin.’ So away it was put in Bridgie’s cupboard, and Esmeralda comes peeping at it, and, thinks she, ‘What yellow lace! It would be a disgrace to us all to have the girl dancing about with that dirty stuff round her neck,’ so not a word did she speak, but off with the lace and washed it herself, with a good hard rub, and plenty of blue bag. Then she ironed it, with a morsel of starch to make it stand out and show itself off, and stitched it on again as proud as could be. It was to be a surprise for Bridgie, and, me dears, itwasa surprise! Mother and Bridgie screeching at the top of their voices, and looking as if the plague was upon us. Would ye believe it, it was just what they liked, to have the lace that colour, and it was the bad turn Esmeralda had done them, starching it up like new! Off it all came, and mother found an old lace scarf, yellower than the first, and pinned it round Bridgie’s shoulders, and she had pearls round her neck, and a star in her hair, and Lord Atrim danced the first dance with her, and told me mother she was the prettiest thing he had seen for a twelvemonth. But Esmeralda sulked all the evening, and it was very lively for me alone at home with her tantrums!”Flora chuckled softly, and Ethel give a shrill “He! he!” from her cubicle at the other end of the room.“I do think you must be the funniest family! You seem always to be doing the most extraordinary things. We never have such experiences at home. We used to go along quietly and steadily, and there is never any hubbub nor excitement. You seem to have a constant succession of alarms and adventures.”“We do so!” said Pixie with relish. “Scarcely the day that we’re not all rushing about in distraction about something. Either it’s the boys tumbling out of the barn and cutting themselves open, or father bringing home accidents from the meet, or the ferret getting loose in the drawing-room when there’s visitors present, or not a pound of fresh meat in the house, and the Bishop taking it into his head to drive over ten miles to lunch! And Bridgie was for going out and killing a chicken, and engaging him in conversation while it was cooked, but mother says, ‘No, the man’s hungry! Bring lunch in the same as if we were alone, and leave the rest to me.’ And when he had asked the blessing she says, smiling, ‘It’s nothing but ham and eggs I’ve got to offer ye, Bishop, but there’s enough welcome for ten courses,’ and the smile of him would have done you good to behold. Three eggs he ate, and half a pig besides, and ‘It’s the best lunch I’ve had since I said good-bye to short jackets,’ he said when he was finished.”“Now, now, Pixie, not so much talking! Get on with your own dressing, you little chatterbox!” cried Kate, putting her head round the corner of the curtain and giving a tug to the end of the short black skirt. “Flora can manage now, and you have not too much time, if you are to catch Lottie before she goes out. Hurry up! Hurry up!”Pixie retired obediently, for Kate was head girl of the dormitory, and must needs be obeyed; so one black frock came off and another went on, the stout boots were exchanged for slippers, and then—the others having already departed—she turned down the gas, and skipped along to the room where Lottie stood waiting for her, a vision of spotless white.“That’s right! I was just wondering what had become of you. Sit down here, and I’ll put on the collar, and just call out if I stick a pin in you by mistake. I’m going to fasten it with this little brooch. There! Isn’t it sweet? I think I will give it to you to keep. I never wear it, and you might just as well have it. Yes, I will! You shall have it for a term-holiday present, because you were a kind little girl and didn’t join the other girls when they were nasty to me last week. Are you pleased with it now?”“Oh–h, Lottie! You darlin’! Is it really me very own?” Pixie was fairly breathless with pleasure and excitement, and could only exclaim rapturously and gaze at the reflection of the new treasure, while Lottie smiled, well pleased to have given so much pleasure. Yes! she told herself she was really devoted to Pixie O’Shaughnessy! There was something so sweet and taking about the child that it made one feel nice to give her pleasure, and she pinned, and arranged, and tied ribbons with as much zest as if she were arranging her own toilette.“There! Now you are done. I think you look very nice. The collar goes so well with that black dress.”“My worrd! Aren’t I stylish! I just look beautiful!” cried Pixie, poking her ugly little face close to the glass, and twisting round and round to examine herself in all aspects. She kissed Lottie effusively, expressed a hundred thanks, and danced downstairs into the schoolroom, where the girls were standing about in twos and threes, looking so grand that it was quite difficult to recognise them. They all stared at her as the latest arrival, and Pixie, being conscious of their scrutiny, held out her arms stiffly on either side, and revolved slowly round and round on one heel. The girls laughed uproariously at first, then suddenly the laughs subsided into titters, and Pixie, stopping to see what was wrong, espied Miss Phipps and the three governesses standing just inside the doorway, watching with the rest and applauding with their hands. It was an embarrassing moment, and the performer made a quick dash behind a sofa to screen herself from publicity, but she had not been there five minutes before she was called upon to answer a question.“Pixie, Kate tells me you were in Lottie’s room before you came down. Was she nearly ready?”“She was, Miss Phipps, quite ready! Only waiting for me. She’s on a white dress, and—”“Never mind that. I want you to run upstairs, please, and tell her that the cab is here. She must put on her wraps and come down at once.”“I will, Miss Phipps.” There was a whisk of short black skirts and off she went, running lightly upstairs, and raising her voice in rich, musical cry, “Lottie! Lottie!”“The real Irish voice! She ought to be able to sing charmingly when she is older,” said Miss Phipps to Mademoiselle, and Mademoiselle nodded her head in assent.“I ’ope so! It is a great charm for a young girl to sing well, and she is not pretty.La pauvre petite!”“No; yet the father is fine-looking, and my friends tell me that the two sisters are quite beauties, and all the family wonderfully handsome with this one exception. But Pixie is better than pretty, she is charming. Would you be kind enough to go to the dining-room to see if everything is ready, Mademoiselle? It is time we began tea.”Mademoiselle departed, and came back to give the required signal, when the girls filed slowly across the hall, casting curious glances at Lottie as she came downstairs. She was wrapped up in a long white cloak, and had a fleecy shawl thrown over her head, almost covering her face from view. She looked very dainty, and when the door opened and they beheld her step into the cab, they felt a rising of envy which could not be entirely removed, even by the sight of the luxurious tea spread out on the dining-room table.“Lottie is a lucky creature!” sighed Clara discontentedly. “She is always going out. I wish my people lived near, instead of at the other end of England. I am glad I am North Country, though; I don’t like Southerners! I agree with Tennyson—“‘True, and firm, and tender is the North;False, and fair, and smiling is the South.’”“It isn’t false; it’s sweet!”“Itisfalse, I tell you! False, and fair, and—”“Sweet, and fair, and—”“Ask Miss Phipps, then, if you won’t believe me. Oh, I say, look at the icing on the cake! We didn’t have icing last time. Doesn’t the table look nice? I do think it is sweet of Miss Phipps to take so much trouble. Sit by me, and we will get hold of Pixie, and make her tell us stories. It makes me laugh just to hear that child talk. Her brogue doesn’t get a bit better.”“I hope it never may. Pixie, here! Sit by us. We’ve kept a place!”But Pixie shook her head, for she had been engaged to Flora ever since breakfast, and was already seating herself at the other end of the table. She did not speak much, however, during the meal, for experience had taught what it had been difficult to express in words—that it was not respectful to her teachers to chatter in their presence, as she would do with her companions. She applied herself instead to the good things that had been provided, and ate away steadily until she had sampled the contents of every plate upon the table, and could superintend the choice of her companions with the wisdom of experience.Miss Phipps had drawn out a programme of games for the evening’s amusement, and later on the older pupils took it in turns to play waltzes and polkas, while the others danced. The teachers joined in with the rest, and it was a proud girl who had Miss Phipps for a partner, while Mademoiselle was so light and agile that it was like dancing with a feather, and Fraulein felt like a heavy log lying against one’s arm. Then everyone sat down and puffed and panted, while Jeanie, the Scotch girl, danced a Highland Fling, and when Pixie called out an appropriate “Hoch! Hoch!” the teachers laughed as heartily as the girls; for be it well understood there are things which are allowed on term-holiday which the rashest spirit dare not attempt on working days! Then two pretty sisters went through the stately figures of a minuet, and Margaret sang a song in her sweet voice, pronouncing the words so distinctly that you really knew what she was singing about, which nowadays is a very rare and wonderful accomplishment. Altogether it was a most festive evening, and Flora was in the act of remarking complacently, “We really are a most accomplished school!” when suddenly the scene changed, and an expression of horrified anxiety appeared on every face, for Mademoiselle came rushing into the room, which she had left but a few minutes before, and the tears stood in her eyes, and her face was scarlet with mingled grief and anger. She held in one hand the gold stopper of her precious scent-bottle, and in the other a number of pieces of broken glass, at sight of which a groan of dismay sounded on every hand.“Voilà! RegardezSee what I ’ave found! I go to my room, and the air is full of scent, and I turn up the gas, and there it is—on the dressing-table before my eyes—in pieces! My bottle—that I have kept all these years—that was given to me by my friend—my dear, good friend!”Her voice broke off in a sob, and Miss Phipps came forward to examine the pieces with an expression of real distress.“But, Mademoiselle, how has it happened? You found it on the table, you say,—not on the floor. If it had been on the floor, you might perhaps have swept it off in leaving the room, and not heard the sound against the mat. But on the table! How could it be broken on the table?”“Someone has been touching it and let it drop.”“I be so careless as to break my bottle? It is impossible to think of! I never come away without a look to see that it is safe. I dust my dressing-table myself every morning, so that no one shall interfere with my things. The servants know that it is so. When I came downstairs this evening it was all right. I have not been upstairs since.”“I think very few of us have. We have been too busy. Ellen would go in, of course, to prepare the bed. Did she—”“Yes! It was Ellen who told me. I was in the hall, and she came out of the kitchen and said, ‘Oh, Mademoiselle, do you know? Your beautiful bottle is broken!’” Mademoiselle’s voice broke; she held out the pieces and exclaimed in broken tones, “And I ran—and I saw—this!”“I am sorry! I am grieved! But we must get to the bottom of this mystery. Things do not fall over and break by themselves. Girls, do any of you know anything about this? If so, please speak out at once, and don’t be afraid to tell the truth. If by any chance one of you has unintentionally broken Mademoiselle’s bottle, I know you will be as deeply grieved as she can be herself; but the only thing you can do now is to explain, and beg her forgiveness. Carelessness it must have been, and you cannot hope to escape altogether without punishment, but remember deception is fifty times worse. I have no mercy on a girl who knows she is guilty, and lets her companions rest under the shadow of suspicion. Now, I ask you again, do you know anything at all of the cause of this accident?”There was a unanimous burst of denial from all parts of the room; but different girls took the question in different ways, as was natural to the different characters. Some looked grieved, some indignant, a few showed suspicions of tears, and Pixie looked so thoroughly scared and miserable that more than one eye rested curiously upon her.Miss Phipps glanced around with her keen, scrutinising glance, then pressed her lips together, and said sharply—“This becomes serious! You all deny it? Very well, I must find out the truth for myself. Call Ellen, please, Mademoiselle. I am sorry to have such a painful ending to our happy holiday, but we cannot go to bed with this cloud hanging over us. Ellen, Mademoiselle tells me that you found the scent-bottle broken when you went into her room just now to turn down the bed!”Ellen straightened herself and fumbled miserably with the corner of her apron. She loved all the girls, and had known many of them for years; for though other maids might come and go, Ellen, like the brook, went on for ever. She had been a servant in the Phipps family, and had accompanied “her young lady” when Holly House was bought and the school first founded. Matron, nurse, general factotum, and refuge in time of trouble, it would have been as easy to suspect her of duplicity as Miss Phipps herself. She was wretched now because she feared that her “children” might be in trouble, and her “children” knew it, and loved her for her fear.“I did, Miss Emily. It was lying just where it usually stands, with the glass piled up in a little heap.”“It looked, then, as if someone had arranged it so? Not as if it had been, say, blown over by any chance?”“It couldn’t have blown over, Miss Emily! It was too heavy. And it wasn’t near the window, either.”“And the pieces, you say, were gathered together, as if someone had placed them so? Very well, I understand! Now, Ellen, have any of the other maids been upstairs to your knowledge since Mademoiselle left her room at seven o’clock?”“They say they have not, miss, for I asked them, and I’ve been in the kitchen all the time. We were busy clearing away after tea, and getting the refreshments ready for supper, and then we came and watched the young ladies dance.”“You would have noticed if anyone had gone upstairs?”“I think I should, being together all the time. They have no work upstairs at this hour—”“I know that, but I must speak to them myself later on. There is one thing more, Ellen. Your work upstairs takes you a good time. In passing to and fro, you didn’t happen to see anyone in or near Mademoiselle’s room, I suppose? Speak up, please! Remember I rely upon you to do all in your power to help me to get to the bottom of this mystery!”The last words were added in a warning voice, for Ellen’s start of dismay and drawn, miserable brows too plainly betrayed the truth of her mistress’s surmise.“I saw—when I went up first in the middle of the dancing, I was at the end of the passage, and I saw little Miss O’Shaughnessy coming out of a room. I couldn’t be sure, but Ithoughtit was Mademoiselle’s!”She had said it, and in an instant every eye in the room was riveted upon Pixie, and every heart sank woefully at the sight of her crimson, agitated face. It said much for the hold which she had gained on her companions’ affections that at this moment the feeling in every girl’s breast was that she would prefer to find the culprit in almost any other girl in the school than in dear, loving, kind-hearted Irish Pixie. Perhaps Miss Phipps felt the same, but it did not become her to show favouritism, and her voice was very stern and cold.“Come here, Pixie, please! Stand before me! You have heard what Ellen says! Was it Mademoiselle’s room out of which you were coming?”“It—was, Miss Phipps!” said Pixie, with a gulp; and a groan of dismay sounded through the room, at which Miss Phipps’s eyes sent out a flashing glance.“Silence, please! Leave this to me! Was it you who let the bottle fall and broke it, then, though you would not acknowledge it when I asked just now?”Pixie’s lips moved, but she seemed so paralysed with fear that she had to repeat her words twice over before they could be heard.“No, I—I didn’t break it, Miss Phipps! I didn’t break it!”“Do you mean to say you know nothing about it? Did you not notice it when you were in the room? May I ask what you were doing in that room at all? You had no business in there.”“I—I—please, Miss Phipps, the gas was down; I didn’t see anything!”“I asked you, Pixie, what you were doing in that room?”To the dismay of her companions, Pixie hung her head and refused to answer, and, when the question was repeated, had no reason to offer but a stammering, “It was nothing! I was doing nothing!”“That is nonsense, Pixie; you would not go upstairs and into a strange room, to-night of all nights, without a very definite reason. I insist upon your telling me what you were doing. If it is nothing of which you are ashamed, you need surely not hesitate to speak.”“I wasn’t doing anything! I never touched it!” said Pixie once more, and an expression came over her face which was well known to the inhabitants of Bally William, though so far it was unfamiliar to her companions—a dumb, obstinate look which promised little satisfaction to the questioner.“If you refuse to answer me, Pixie, it is your own fault if I suspect you. You have been with us only a short time, but I have always believed you to be truthful and straightforward. I should be sorry to change my opinion, but you will have yourself to blame!” She paused and looked down at the little black figure, and her face softened regretfully. “You need not look so terrified, child. Mademoiselle is naturally very grieved and distressed, but you know her well enough to be sure that she would forgive you if you have unintentionally broken her pretty bottle. She would be sorry to drive you into telling a falsehood—wouldn’t you, Mademoiselle?”“I shall say nothing to her. My bottle is gone, and it can do no good now. But she had no right to touch my things. My room is my own, and she had no business there at all. I thought you were a good girl, Pixie, and remembered what I had said to you. I did not think you would grieve me like this. I have not so many treasures!”Mademoiselle’s tears trickled down afresh, and the girls began to look askance at Pixie, and to feel the first incredulity give place to a horrible doubt. Why wouldn’t she speak? Why did she look so guilty? Why need she have been so alarmed at the first mention of the accident if she had no part in bringing it about? Margaret held out her hand with an involuntary gesture of appeal, and Pixie, seeing it, shut her lips more tightly than ever.“You may go to your room, Pixie,” said Miss Phipps coldly. “I am very much disappointed in you!”

It was already dark when the crocodile passed in at the gates of Holly House on its return from the expedition to town, and Miss Phipps gave instructions that the girls were to go straight to their rooms to dress for the evening. Full dress was the rule for the evenings of term-holiday, for even if nothing particular was going on, and no extra guests expected, it gave one a gala feeling to don a light frock, and gaze down upon one’s very best shoes and stockings. Before leaving for town in the morning, visits had been paid to the box-room to take the rarely-used splendours from their wrappings, and now they lay stretched out in all their glory on the narrow beds, white, blue, and pink, a very wealth of colour and luxury.

Pixie O’Shaughnessy, having no adornment to do for herself, acted as lady’s-maid to her bedroom, with much satisfaction to her mistresses, and credit to herself. She brushed Kate’s hair until it was so smooth and flat as to be almost invisible from a front view; she tied Ethel’s sash, and the ribbon to match which confined the ends of her curls; and she fastened Flora’s dress, which was a matter of difficulty and time, for though it was let out regularly each holiday-time, it invariably grew too tight before it was needed again.

“I can’t help it,” the poor thing protested miserably. “I don’t eat half as much as Ethel, and she’s as thin as a stick. It’s my fate! I was born fat, and I go on growing fatter and fatter all the time. I shall be a fat woman in a show, before I am done with it. It’s hard lines, for I should so love to be slim and willowy. That’s what the heroines are in books, and it makes me quite ill every time I read it. Nothing exciting ever happens to fat people! The thin ones get all the fun and excitement, and marry the nice man, while the poor fatty stays at home, and waits upon her hand and foot. Then she grows into an aunt, and takes charge of the nephews and nieces when they have fever or measles, or when the parents go abroad for a holiday. Everyone imposes upon her, just because she is fat!”

“No, indeed, then, it is because she’s good-natured. Look at yourself now; you are always laughing!” declared Pixie soothingly. “Hold yer breath a single moment while I get the better of this hook. Ye’ll not need to curtsey too low, I’m thinking, or you’ll go off like a cracker! And the elegant dress that it is, too! I remember the night Bridgie went to her first ball, the Hunt Ball it was, over at Roskillie. It was me mother’s wedding-dress that she wore, and she looked like a picture in it, the darlin’! Me mother was for having it altered to be in the fashion, but me father says, ‘Leave it alone; you’ll spoil it if ye alter a stitch! It’s better than fashionable,’ he says, ‘it’s artistic, and fits the child like her own skin.’ So away it was put in Bridgie’s cupboard, and Esmeralda comes peeping at it, and, thinks she, ‘What yellow lace! It would be a disgrace to us all to have the girl dancing about with that dirty stuff round her neck,’ so not a word did she speak, but off with the lace and washed it herself, with a good hard rub, and plenty of blue bag. Then she ironed it, with a morsel of starch to make it stand out and show itself off, and stitched it on again as proud as could be. It was to be a surprise for Bridgie, and, me dears, itwasa surprise! Mother and Bridgie screeching at the top of their voices, and looking as if the plague was upon us. Would ye believe it, it was just what they liked, to have the lace that colour, and it was the bad turn Esmeralda had done them, starching it up like new! Off it all came, and mother found an old lace scarf, yellower than the first, and pinned it round Bridgie’s shoulders, and she had pearls round her neck, and a star in her hair, and Lord Atrim danced the first dance with her, and told me mother she was the prettiest thing he had seen for a twelvemonth. But Esmeralda sulked all the evening, and it was very lively for me alone at home with her tantrums!”

Flora chuckled softly, and Ethel give a shrill “He! he!” from her cubicle at the other end of the room.

“I do think you must be the funniest family! You seem always to be doing the most extraordinary things. We never have such experiences at home. We used to go along quietly and steadily, and there is never any hubbub nor excitement. You seem to have a constant succession of alarms and adventures.”

“We do so!” said Pixie with relish. “Scarcely the day that we’re not all rushing about in distraction about something. Either it’s the boys tumbling out of the barn and cutting themselves open, or father bringing home accidents from the meet, or the ferret getting loose in the drawing-room when there’s visitors present, or not a pound of fresh meat in the house, and the Bishop taking it into his head to drive over ten miles to lunch! And Bridgie was for going out and killing a chicken, and engaging him in conversation while it was cooked, but mother says, ‘No, the man’s hungry! Bring lunch in the same as if we were alone, and leave the rest to me.’ And when he had asked the blessing she says, smiling, ‘It’s nothing but ham and eggs I’ve got to offer ye, Bishop, but there’s enough welcome for ten courses,’ and the smile of him would have done you good to behold. Three eggs he ate, and half a pig besides, and ‘It’s the best lunch I’ve had since I said good-bye to short jackets,’ he said when he was finished.”

“Now, now, Pixie, not so much talking! Get on with your own dressing, you little chatterbox!” cried Kate, putting her head round the corner of the curtain and giving a tug to the end of the short black skirt. “Flora can manage now, and you have not too much time, if you are to catch Lottie before she goes out. Hurry up! Hurry up!”

Pixie retired obediently, for Kate was head girl of the dormitory, and must needs be obeyed; so one black frock came off and another went on, the stout boots were exchanged for slippers, and then—the others having already departed—she turned down the gas, and skipped along to the room where Lottie stood waiting for her, a vision of spotless white.

“That’s right! I was just wondering what had become of you. Sit down here, and I’ll put on the collar, and just call out if I stick a pin in you by mistake. I’m going to fasten it with this little brooch. There! Isn’t it sweet? I think I will give it to you to keep. I never wear it, and you might just as well have it. Yes, I will! You shall have it for a term-holiday present, because you were a kind little girl and didn’t join the other girls when they were nasty to me last week. Are you pleased with it now?”

“Oh–h, Lottie! You darlin’! Is it really me very own?” Pixie was fairly breathless with pleasure and excitement, and could only exclaim rapturously and gaze at the reflection of the new treasure, while Lottie smiled, well pleased to have given so much pleasure. Yes! she told herself she was really devoted to Pixie O’Shaughnessy! There was something so sweet and taking about the child that it made one feel nice to give her pleasure, and she pinned, and arranged, and tied ribbons with as much zest as if she were arranging her own toilette.

“There! Now you are done. I think you look very nice. The collar goes so well with that black dress.”

“My worrd! Aren’t I stylish! I just look beautiful!” cried Pixie, poking her ugly little face close to the glass, and twisting round and round to examine herself in all aspects. She kissed Lottie effusively, expressed a hundred thanks, and danced downstairs into the schoolroom, where the girls were standing about in twos and threes, looking so grand that it was quite difficult to recognise them. They all stared at her as the latest arrival, and Pixie, being conscious of their scrutiny, held out her arms stiffly on either side, and revolved slowly round and round on one heel. The girls laughed uproariously at first, then suddenly the laughs subsided into titters, and Pixie, stopping to see what was wrong, espied Miss Phipps and the three governesses standing just inside the doorway, watching with the rest and applauding with their hands. It was an embarrassing moment, and the performer made a quick dash behind a sofa to screen herself from publicity, but she had not been there five minutes before she was called upon to answer a question.

“Pixie, Kate tells me you were in Lottie’s room before you came down. Was she nearly ready?”

“She was, Miss Phipps, quite ready! Only waiting for me. She’s on a white dress, and—”

“Never mind that. I want you to run upstairs, please, and tell her that the cab is here. She must put on her wraps and come down at once.”

“I will, Miss Phipps.” There was a whisk of short black skirts and off she went, running lightly upstairs, and raising her voice in rich, musical cry, “Lottie! Lottie!”

“The real Irish voice! She ought to be able to sing charmingly when she is older,” said Miss Phipps to Mademoiselle, and Mademoiselle nodded her head in assent.

“I ’ope so! It is a great charm for a young girl to sing well, and she is not pretty.La pauvre petite!”

“No; yet the father is fine-looking, and my friends tell me that the two sisters are quite beauties, and all the family wonderfully handsome with this one exception. But Pixie is better than pretty, she is charming. Would you be kind enough to go to the dining-room to see if everything is ready, Mademoiselle? It is time we began tea.”

Mademoiselle departed, and came back to give the required signal, when the girls filed slowly across the hall, casting curious glances at Lottie as she came downstairs. She was wrapped up in a long white cloak, and had a fleecy shawl thrown over her head, almost covering her face from view. She looked very dainty, and when the door opened and they beheld her step into the cab, they felt a rising of envy which could not be entirely removed, even by the sight of the luxurious tea spread out on the dining-room table.

“Lottie is a lucky creature!” sighed Clara discontentedly. “She is always going out. I wish my people lived near, instead of at the other end of England. I am glad I am North Country, though; I don’t like Southerners! I agree with Tennyson—

“‘True, and firm, and tender is the North;False, and fair, and smiling is the South.’”

“‘True, and firm, and tender is the North;False, and fair, and smiling is the South.’”

“It isn’t false; it’s sweet!”

“Itisfalse, I tell you! False, and fair, and—”

“Sweet, and fair, and—”

“Ask Miss Phipps, then, if you won’t believe me. Oh, I say, look at the icing on the cake! We didn’t have icing last time. Doesn’t the table look nice? I do think it is sweet of Miss Phipps to take so much trouble. Sit by me, and we will get hold of Pixie, and make her tell us stories. It makes me laugh just to hear that child talk. Her brogue doesn’t get a bit better.”

“I hope it never may. Pixie, here! Sit by us. We’ve kept a place!”

But Pixie shook her head, for she had been engaged to Flora ever since breakfast, and was already seating herself at the other end of the table. She did not speak much, however, during the meal, for experience had taught what it had been difficult to express in words—that it was not respectful to her teachers to chatter in their presence, as she would do with her companions. She applied herself instead to the good things that had been provided, and ate away steadily until she had sampled the contents of every plate upon the table, and could superintend the choice of her companions with the wisdom of experience.

Miss Phipps had drawn out a programme of games for the evening’s amusement, and later on the older pupils took it in turns to play waltzes and polkas, while the others danced. The teachers joined in with the rest, and it was a proud girl who had Miss Phipps for a partner, while Mademoiselle was so light and agile that it was like dancing with a feather, and Fraulein felt like a heavy log lying against one’s arm. Then everyone sat down and puffed and panted, while Jeanie, the Scotch girl, danced a Highland Fling, and when Pixie called out an appropriate “Hoch! Hoch!” the teachers laughed as heartily as the girls; for be it well understood there are things which are allowed on term-holiday which the rashest spirit dare not attempt on working days! Then two pretty sisters went through the stately figures of a minuet, and Margaret sang a song in her sweet voice, pronouncing the words so distinctly that you really knew what she was singing about, which nowadays is a very rare and wonderful accomplishment. Altogether it was a most festive evening, and Flora was in the act of remarking complacently, “We really are a most accomplished school!” when suddenly the scene changed, and an expression of horrified anxiety appeared on every face, for Mademoiselle came rushing into the room, which she had left but a few minutes before, and the tears stood in her eyes, and her face was scarlet with mingled grief and anger. She held in one hand the gold stopper of her precious scent-bottle, and in the other a number of pieces of broken glass, at sight of which a groan of dismay sounded on every hand.

“Voilà! RegardezSee what I ’ave found! I go to my room, and the air is full of scent, and I turn up the gas, and there it is—on the dressing-table before my eyes—in pieces! My bottle—that I have kept all these years—that was given to me by my friend—my dear, good friend!”

Her voice broke off in a sob, and Miss Phipps came forward to examine the pieces with an expression of real distress.

“But, Mademoiselle, how has it happened? You found it on the table, you say,—not on the floor. If it had been on the floor, you might perhaps have swept it off in leaving the room, and not heard the sound against the mat. But on the table! How could it be broken on the table?”

“Someone has been touching it and let it drop.”

“I be so careless as to break my bottle? It is impossible to think of! I never come away without a look to see that it is safe. I dust my dressing-table myself every morning, so that no one shall interfere with my things. The servants know that it is so. When I came downstairs this evening it was all right. I have not been upstairs since.”

“I think very few of us have. We have been too busy. Ellen would go in, of course, to prepare the bed. Did she—”

“Yes! It was Ellen who told me. I was in the hall, and she came out of the kitchen and said, ‘Oh, Mademoiselle, do you know? Your beautiful bottle is broken!’” Mademoiselle’s voice broke; she held out the pieces and exclaimed in broken tones, “And I ran—and I saw—this!”

“I am sorry! I am grieved! But we must get to the bottom of this mystery. Things do not fall over and break by themselves. Girls, do any of you know anything about this? If so, please speak out at once, and don’t be afraid to tell the truth. If by any chance one of you has unintentionally broken Mademoiselle’s bottle, I know you will be as deeply grieved as she can be herself; but the only thing you can do now is to explain, and beg her forgiveness. Carelessness it must have been, and you cannot hope to escape altogether without punishment, but remember deception is fifty times worse. I have no mercy on a girl who knows she is guilty, and lets her companions rest under the shadow of suspicion. Now, I ask you again, do you know anything at all of the cause of this accident?”

There was a unanimous burst of denial from all parts of the room; but different girls took the question in different ways, as was natural to the different characters. Some looked grieved, some indignant, a few showed suspicions of tears, and Pixie looked so thoroughly scared and miserable that more than one eye rested curiously upon her.

Miss Phipps glanced around with her keen, scrutinising glance, then pressed her lips together, and said sharply—

“This becomes serious! You all deny it? Very well, I must find out the truth for myself. Call Ellen, please, Mademoiselle. I am sorry to have such a painful ending to our happy holiday, but we cannot go to bed with this cloud hanging over us. Ellen, Mademoiselle tells me that you found the scent-bottle broken when you went into her room just now to turn down the bed!”

Ellen straightened herself and fumbled miserably with the corner of her apron. She loved all the girls, and had known many of them for years; for though other maids might come and go, Ellen, like the brook, went on for ever. She had been a servant in the Phipps family, and had accompanied “her young lady” when Holly House was bought and the school first founded. Matron, nurse, general factotum, and refuge in time of trouble, it would have been as easy to suspect her of duplicity as Miss Phipps herself. She was wretched now because she feared that her “children” might be in trouble, and her “children” knew it, and loved her for her fear.

“I did, Miss Emily. It was lying just where it usually stands, with the glass piled up in a little heap.”

“It looked, then, as if someone had arranged it so? Not as if it had been, say, blown over by any chance?”

“It couldn’t have blown over, Miss Emily! It was too heavy. And it wasn’t near the window, either.”

“And the pieces, you say, were gathered together, as if someone had placed them so? Very well, I understand! Now, Ellen, have any of the other maids been upstairs to your knowledge since Mademoiselle left her room at seven o’clock?”

“They say they have not, miss, for I asked them, and I’ve been in the kitchen all the time. We were busy clearing away after tea, and getting the refreshments ready for supper, and then we came and watched the young ladies dance.”

“You would have noticed if anyone had gone upstairs?”

“I think I should, being together all the time. They have no work upstairs at this hour—”

“I know that, but I must speak to them myself later on. There is one thing more, Ellen. Your work upstairs takes you a good time. In passing to and fro, you didn’t happen to see anyone in or near Mademoiselle’s room, I suppose? Speak up, please! Remember I rely upon you to do all in your power to help me to get to the bottom of this mystery!”

The last words were added in a warning voice, for Ellen’s start of dismay and drawn, miserable brows too plainly betrayed the truth of her mistress’s surmise.

“I saw—when I went up first in the middle of the dancing, I was at the end of the passage, and I saw little Miss O’Shaughnessy coming out of a room. I couldn’t be sure, but Ithoughtit was Mademoiselle’s!”

She had said it, and in an instant every eye in the room was riveted upon Pixie, and every heart sank woefully at the sight of her crimson, agitated face. It said much for the hold which she had gained on her companions’ affections that at this moment the feeling in every girl’s breast was that she would prefer to find the culprit in almost any other girl in the school than in dear, loving, kind-hearted Irish Pixie. Perhaps Miss Phipps felt the same, but it did not become her to show favouritism, and her voice was very stern and cold.

“Come here, Pixie, please! Stand before me! You have heard what Ellen says! Was it Mademoiselle’s room out of which you were coming?”

“It—was, Miss Phipps!” said Pixie, with a gulp; and a groan of dismay sounded through the room, at which Miss Phipps’s eyes sent out a flashing glance.

“Silence, please! Leave this to me! Was it you who let the bottle fall and broke it, then, though you would not acknowledge it when I asked just now?”

Pixie’s lips moved, but she seemed so paralysed with fear that she had to repeat her words twice over before they could be heard.

“No, I—I didn’t break it, Miss Phipps! I didn’t break it!”

“Do you mean to say you know nothing about it? Did you not notice it when you were in the room? May I ask what you were doing in that room at all? You had no business in there.”

“I—I—please, Miss Phipps, the gas was down; I didn’t see anything!”

“I asked you, Pixie, what you were doing in that room?”

To the dismay of her companions, Pixie hung her head and refused to answer, and, when the question was repeated, had no reason to offer but a stammering, “It was nothing! I was doing nothing!”

“That is nonsense, Pixie; you would not go upstairs and into a strange room, to-night of all nights, without a very definite reason. I insist upon your telling me what you were doing. If it is nothing of which you are ashamed, you need surely not hesitate to speak.”

“I wasn’t doing anything! I never touched it!” said Pixie once more, and an expression came over her face which was well known to the inhabitants of Bally William, though so far it was unfamiliar to her companions—a dumb, obstinate look which promised little satisfaction to the questioner.

“If you refuse to answer me, Pixie, it is your own fault if I suspect you. You have been with us only a short time, but I have always believed you to be truthful and straightforward. I should be sorry to change my opinion, but you will have yourself to blame!” She paused and looked down at the little black figure, and her face softened regretfully. “You need not look so terrified, child. Mademoiselle is naturally very grieved and distressed, but you know her well enough to be sure that she would forgive you if you have unintentionally broken her pretty bottle. She would be sorry to drive you into telling a falsehood—wouldn’t you, Mademoiselle?”

“I shall say nothing to her. My bottle is gone, and it can do no good now. But she had no right to touch my things. My room is my own, and she had no business there at all. I thought you were a good girl, Pixie, and remembered what I had said to you. I did not think you would grieve me like this. I have not so many treasures!”

Mademoiselle’s tears trickled down afresh, and the girls began to look askance at Pixie, and to feel the first incredulity give place to a horrible doubt. Why wouldn’t she speak? Why did she look so guilty? Why need she have been so alarmed at the first mention of the accident if she had no part in bringing it about? Margaret held out her hand with an involuntary gesture of appeal, and Pixie, seeing it, shut her lips more tightly than ever.

“You may go to your room, Pixie,” said Miss Phipps coldly. “I am very much disappointed in you!”

Chapter Nine.Dark Days.The three girls who shared Pixie’s room were not forbidden to speak to her when they went upstairs to bed, and their first impulse was to pull aside the curtains of her cubicle, where she was discovered lying on the top of the bed, still fully dressed, with features swollen and disfigured with crying. She was shivering, too, and the hand which Kate touched was so icy cold that she exclaimed in horrified reproach—“Pixie, you are freezing! What do you mean by not getting into bed? You will catch a chill, and then goodness knows what may happen! You may go into consumption and die.”Pixie gave a dismal little sniff, and her teeth chattered together.“That’s what I thought. A girl at Bally William died of a chill, and consumption’s in our family. Me mother’s cousin suffered from it every winter. I want to die!”“Here, sit up! I am going to unhook you. Dear me, what a mess you have made of your fine collar! I don’t know what Lottie will say when she sees it. Lucky girl to be out to-night and escape all this fuss! She always gets the best of things. I never wish to spend such an evening again, I know that!”“Pixie, why wouldn’t you tell? Why wouldn’t you answer Miss Phipps?” cried Flora, unable to contain herself a moment longer; and Pixie drew herself up, and tried to look dignified, a difficult achievement when one is being forcibly undressed, and can hardly see out of red, swollen eyelids.“I told her I had not broken the bottle. I gave her a straight answer, and that ought to be enough for any lady!”“Don’t talk such rubbish! This house is not yours, and if you go wandering about into strange rooms, it is only right that you should be made to explain. And it looks so bad when you refuse to answer. You don’t realise how bad it looks. After you left the room, Miss Phipps asked if we had heard you say anything which would explain your going into that room, and we all remembered—we didn’t want to tell, but we were obliged—we remembered that you said you intended to have a good look at the scent-bottle.”“So I did, and I don’t mind who you tell. I looked at it the very next day, but I never lifted it once. I was too afraid I’d be hurting it, and it was all right long after that—Mademoiselle said so herself!”The three girls looked at each other quickly, and as quickly averted their eyes. Ethel gave a toss to her curls, and walked off to her cubicle. Kate went on unhooking with relentless haste, and Flora sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, and melted into tears.“I wish scent-bottles had never been invented! I wish that old marquise had had more sense than to spend her money on a thing that would break if you looked at it! I know how easy it would be. I’ve broken lots of things myself. Mother always said to us when we were children, ‘Don’t be afraid to tell me if you’ve had an accident. I will never scold you if you tell the truth, but if I find out that you have hidden anything from me I shall be extremely angry.’ Lots of girls tell stories just because they are frightened, especially little ones, and when they are strange, too, and don’t know people well. But we all love you, Pixie, really and truly we do! We won’t turn against you. Oh, do tell! Do tell! Tell Kate and me now before we go to bed, and we will help you to-morrow.”“Will Miss Phipps talk to me again to-morrow? Will she be cross again? Will Mademoiselle be cross?” cried Pixie fearfully. “Oh, what will I do? What will I do? No one was ever cross with me at home. I’ll run away in the night and swim over to Ireland. They’d welcome me there if I’d smashed all the scent-bottles in the world. I never meant to do any harm. I didn’t know it was wrong to go into Mademoiselle’s room. No one ever said I mustn’t. Molly, our maid, broke something every day of her life at Bally William, and no one disturbed themselves about it. What’s a scent-bottle? Suppose Ihadbroken it, why should they make such a storm, I should like to know?”Her sentences were broken by sobs and tears, and her companions had learnt by now that Pixie’s outbursts of grief were not to be trifled with, for while other girls shed tears in a quiet and ladylike manner, Pixie grew hysterical on the slightest pretext, and sobbed, and wailed, and shivered, and shook, and drowned herself in tears until she was in a condition of real physical collapse. To-night Kate signalled imperiously to Flora to depart to her own cubicle, and herself bundled the shaking, quivering little creature into bed, where she left her with a “good-night” sufficiently sympathetic, but—oh, agonies to a sensitive heart!—without attempting the kiss which had become a nightly institution!Next morning Pixie’s face was still swollen and puffy, but her elastic spirits had sufficiently recovered to enable her to make repeated attempts to converse with her taciturn companions, and to run in and out of their cubicles to play lady’s-maid as usual, in such useful, unostentatious ways as carrying water, folding nightgowns, and tying hair ribbons. This morning she was even more assiduous than usual in her attentions, for there was an edge of coldness and reserve in the manner even of Flora herself which cut deeply into the sensitive heart. Then when she had fully dressed, she gathered together Lottie’s fineries and betook herself to the room which that luxurious young lady occupied in solitary splendour.Early as she had been in leaving her cubicle, breakfast had already begun when Pixie made her appearance downstairs, and the furtive manner in which she entered the room was not calculated to dispel the suspicions with which she was regarded. Her “good-morning” to the teachers was a mere mumble, and oh, how formidable they looked! Miss Phipps with tight lips and a back like a poker; Mademoiselle, a vision of misery, and Fraulein and Miss Bruce staring at the tablecloth as if afraid to raise their eyes. As for the girls, they munched away in silence, no one daring to make a remark, and it was significant of the solemnity of the occasion that not a single girl helped herself to marmalade or jam. By the unwritten laws of the school it would have been considered unfeeling to indulge in such luxuries while the reputation of a companion was at stake. It was a ghastly occasion, and Pixie seemed literally to shrink in stature as she cowered in her chair, glancing to right and left with quick, terrified glances. The hopefulness of the earlier morning had departed, and among all the dejected faces round the table hers was conspicuously the worst.There seemed a special meaning in the Bible reading that morning, and when Miss Phipps laid aside the book she added a few words of her own before kneeling in prayer. The sternness had left her face, but it was very grave and sad.“Before we kneel down together this morning, girls, there are some thoughts which I would like to impress upon you all. We are in trouble, and it behoves each one of us to ask in all earnestness that the cloud may be lifted, and that courage and truthfulness may be given where it is most needed. An accident, however regrettable, is not a serious offence, but in this instance it has been turned into one by the refusal of the culprit to acknowledge her offence. I have made every inquiry, and it seems morally certain that one of you must know how it happened, and be able to give a satisfactory explanation; and until she does so, the shadow of her deceit must fall on all. I ask those of you who know that they are blameless to pray for her who is guilty, that she may acknowledge her fault, and for yourselves that you be preserved from temptation; and I ask the guilty one to remember that God reads all hearts, and although she may deceive her companions, she can hide nothing from His eyes. And now we will kneel and pray, and let the words which you say be no vain repetition, but the earnest cry of your hearts that God will help us!”Many of the girls had tears in their eyes as they rose from their knees, and no one was surprised when, as they filed slowly towards the door, Miss Phipps spoke again, to request Pixie O’Shaughnessy to follow her to her private sanctum. Flora thrust her hand through Lottie’s arm as they went upstairs and heaved a sigh of funereal proportions.“Poor little Pixie! Don’t you pity her? Oh, Lottie, you are lucky to have been out last night and escape all this bother! I wish I had had an invitation too, and then, even if Pixie doesn’t confess, no one could possibly think that I had done it. Poor little thing! She is so scared that she hardly knows what she is doing. Did you notice her face at breakfast? Did you hear about the accident when you came in last night, or who told you first?”“I only saw the teachers last night, but Mademoiselle was crying, and I knew something was wrong. Then Pixie came to my room this morning to bring me back my collar, and she told me. It seems that she is suspected because she won’t tell why she was in Mademoiselle’s room. It’s very stupid of her! There can’t be any great mystery about it, one would think, though she wouldn’t tell even me; but if she says she didn’t break the bottle, I think she ought to be believed. She has always been truthful, so far as we know.”“Yes, but then we haven’t known her long, and she has never been in a corner before. It is easy to tell the truth when all is going smoothly, but it’s rather dreadful when you know quite well you are going to be punished; and if you let the first moment pass it’s fifty times worse, because then you have been deceitful as well. What I’m afraid of is that she was too frightened to own up last night—you know what a scarey little thing she is—and that now she is determined to be obstinate and brave it out!”Lottie hitched her shoulder with an impatient movement which drew her arm free from her companion.“Well, I’m fond of Pixie O’Shaughnessy, and I am going to stick to her, whatever happens! It’s mean of Mademoiselle to make such a fuss about an accident which nobody could help. I’ll buy her another scent-bottle myself, if that will satisfy her. I have lots of money, and can get as much more as I want. It’s absurd making thirty people miserable for the sake of a few pounds. I’ll ask Miss Phipps if I may go into town and buy one this very day.”“She wouldn’t let you spend so much without your mother’s consent, and it’s my belief Mademoiselle wouldn’t take it if she did. It was the association she liked, and you could not give her that. I’m fond of Pixie too, but I shan’t like her a bit if she gets us all into trouble, and that’s what it will mean if she is obstinate. We shall have all our treats and holidays knocked off until the truth comes out. It is bound to be discovered sooner or later, don’t you think?”“No, I don’t! Lots of things are never discovered, and the holidays will be here in a month, thank goodness! It will have to drop after that, for it wouldn’t be fair to drag the troubles of one term into the next. I don’t know what Margaret is going to do, but I shall be kind to Pixie and try to help her!”The girls had reached the schoolroom by this time and joined the group by the fire, so that Margaret herself was able to reply.“I shall certainly help her if I can,” she said gently; but her followers noticed that she avoided giving any opinion as to guilt or innocence, and the reticence depressed them still further, for it was unlike Margaret to refrain from speaking a good word if it was possible to do so.She was soon to have an opportunity of trying to help, however, for half an hour later Miss Phipps called her out of class, and said sadly—“I can make nothing of Pixie, Margaret. Will you try what you can do? She seems afraid of me, though I have tried to be as forbearing as possible, and perhaps she may speak more freely to a girl like herself. So long as she refuses to say what she was doing in Mademoiselle’s room we cannot help believing her to be guilty. I am dreadfully upset about it all, and should be so thankful to get at the truth. I have heard of this kind of thing going on in other schools, but this is my first experience, and I earnestly hope it will be the last. She is in my snuggery. Go to her there, and see what your influence will do!”Margaret went, and, at the first opening of the door, Pixie rushed into her arms with a cry of joyous welcome.“Oh, Margaret, I hoped you would come! I wanted you to come. I’m so dreadfully miserable.”“So are we all, Pixie, but you can end the misery if you will only tell us truthfully all you know about this accident. You do know something, I feel certain, or why should you be so afraid to speak? It’s no use being afraid, dear. We all have to do difficult things sometimes, whether we like them or not, and it will only get worse as time goes on. The truth is bound to come out, and then how ashamed you will feel, if you have not taken the opportunity while it was yours!”“Do you think it will be found out, really?” Pixie shivered, and twisted her fingers together in nervous fashion. “But how can it if I don’t tell, and if—if there is no one else?”“I don’t know, Pixie, but I believe it will, sooner or later. It may be later, for God is very patient, and waits to give us our chance before He takes things into His own hands. In the days when Jesus was on earth He used to work miracles, but He doesn’t do that any longer. I used to be sorry for that, but I am not now, for it is so wonderful that He lets us help Him by putting it into our hearts to do His will. He won’t show us in any miraculous way who is deceiving us now, but if she will listen He will speak to her, and make it seem impossible to go on doing wrong.”“That’s what Bridgie said!” agreed Pixie eagerly. “It was the night before I came to school, and she was speaking to me for my good. ‘You’ll be far away from home,’ she said, ‘but you never need be far from Him, and He is your best friend. When you are happy and everything is bright, thank Him for it, for it’s a shame to be always asking, asking, and never saying a “Thank you” for what you receive. And when you are undecided between two ways, take the one that’s hardest, for that was what He meant by bearing the cross; and when you are in trouble, keep still,’ she says, ‘keep still, and you’ll hear His voice in your heart.’ And I was thinking of that last night, and I could hear Bridgie saying it all over again, as plain as if she were by my side!”“And the other voice, Pixie—did you hear that too?”“I tried to, but,”—the small troubled face was pitiful to behold—“it seemed always to say the things I wanted, and I was afraid I was imagining. Then I remembered about doing the hardest thing, and every time I awoke I thought of it again, and this morning I decided that I would!”“Pixie!” cried Margaret, in a tone of almost incredulous relief. “Oh, Pixie, you will really! I am so glad, so glad! You will come with me to Miss Phipps now, and tell all you know!”But Pixie shook her head firmly, and her lips closed in determined lines.“I will never tell,” she said. “I’ll be silent for ever!”

The three girls who shared Pixie’s room were not forbidden to speak to her when they went upstairs to bed, and their first impulse was to pull aside the curtains of her cubicle, where she was discovered lying on the top of the bed, still fully dressed, with features swollen and disfigured with crying. She was shivering, too, and the hand which Kate touched was so icy cold that she exclaimed in horrified reproach—

“Pixie, you are freezing! What do you mean by not getting into bed? You will catch a chill, and then goodness knows what may happen! You may go into consumption and die.”

Pixie gave a dismal little sniff, and her teeth chattered together.

“That’s what I thought. A girl at Bally William died of a chill, and consumption’s in our family. Me mother’s cousin suffered from it every winter. I want to die!”

“Here, sit up! I am going to unhook you. Dear me, what a mess you have made of your fine collar! I don’t know what Lottie will say when she sees it. Lucky girl to be out to-night and escape all this fuss! She always gets the best of things. I never wish to spend such an evening again, I know that!”

“Pixie, why wouldn’t you tell? Why wouldn’t you answer Miss Phipps?” cried Flora, unable to contain herself a moment longer; and Pixie drew herself up, and tried to look dignified, a difficult achievement when one is being forcibly undressed, and can hardly see out of red, swollen eyelids.

“I told her I had not broken the bottle. I gave her a straight answer, and that ought to be enough for any lady!”

“Don’t talk such rubbish! This house is not yours, and if you go wandering about into strange rooms, it is only right that you should be made to explain. And it looks so bad when you refuse to answer. You don’t realise how bad it looks. After you left the room, Miss Phipps asked if we had heard you say anything which would explain your going into that room, and we all remembered—we didn’t want to tell, but we were obliged—we remembered that you said you intended to have a good look at the scent-bottle.”

“So I did, and I don’t mind who you tell. I looked at it the very next day, but I never lifted it once. I was too afraid I’d be hurting it, and it was all right long after that—Mademoiselle said so herself!”

The three girls looked at each other quickly, and as quickly averted their eyes. Ethel gave a toss to her curls, and walked off to her cubicle. Kate went on unhooking with relentless haste, and Flora sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, and melted into tears.

“I wish scent-bottles had never been invented! I wish that old marquise had had more sense than to spend her money on a thing that would break if you looked at it! I know how easy it would be. I’ve broken lots of things myself. Mother always said to us when we were children, ‘Don’t be afraid to tell me if you’ve had an accident. I will never scold you if you tell the truth, but if I find out that you have hidden anything from me I shall be extremely angry.’ Lots of girls tell stories just because they are frightened, especially little ones, and when they are strange, too, and don’t know people well. But we all love you, Pixie, really and truly we do! We won’t turn against you. Oh, do tell! Do tell! Tell Kate and me now before we go to bed, and we will help you to-morrow.”

“Will Miss Phipps talk to me again to-morrow? Will she be cross again? Will Mademoiselle be cross?” cried Pixie fearfully. “Oh, what will I do? What will I do? No one was ever cross with me at home. I’ll run away in the night and swim over to Ireland. They’d welcome me there if I’d smashed all the scent-bottles in the world. I never meant to do any harm. I didn’t know it was wrong to go into Mademoiselle’s room. No one ever said I mustn’t. Molly, our maid, broke something every day of her life at Bally William, and no one disturbed themselves about it. What’s a scent-bottle? Suppose Ihadbroken it, why should they make such a storm, I should like to know?”

Her sentences were broken by sobs and tears, and her companions had learnt by now that Pixie’s outbursts of grief were not to be trifled with, for while other girls shed tears in a quiet and ladylike manner, Pixie grew hysterical on the slightest pretext, and sobbed, and wailed, and shivered, and shook, and drowned herself in tears until she was in a condition of real physical collapse. To-night Kate signalled imperiously to Flora to depart to her own cubicle, and herself bundled the shaking, quivering little creature into bed, where she left her with a “good-night” sufficiently sympathetic, but—oh, agonies to a sensitive heart!—without attempting the kiss which had become a nightly institution!

Next morning Pixie’s face was still swollen and puffy, but her elastic spirits had sufficiently recovered to enable her to make repeated attempts to converse with her taciturn companions, and to run in and out of their cubicles to play lady’s-maid as usual, in such useful, unostentatious ways as carrying water, folding nightgowns, and tying hair ribbons. This morning she was even more assiduous than usual in her attentions, for there was an edge of coldness and reserve in the manner even of Flora herself which cut deeply into the sensitive heart. Then when she had fully dressed, she gathered together Lottie’s fineries and betook herself to the room which that luxurious young lady occupied in solitary splendour.

Early as she had been in leaving her cubicle, breakfast had already begun when Pixie made her appearance downstairs, and the furtive manner in which she entered the room was not calculated to dispel the suspicions with which she was regarded. Her “good-morning” to the teachers was a mere mumble, and oh, how formidable they looked! Miss Phipps with tight lips and a back like a poker; Mademoiselle, a vision of misery, and Fraulein and Miss Bruce staring at the tablecloth as if afraid to raise their eyes. As for the girls, they munched away in silence, no one daring to make a remark, and it was significant of the solemnity of the occasion that not a single girl helped herself to marmalade or jam. By the unwritten laws of the school it would have been considered unfeeling to indulge in such luxuries while the reputation of a companion was at stake. It was a ghastly occasion, and Pixie seemed literally to shrink in stature as she cowered in her chair, glancing to right and left with quick, terrified glances. The hopefulness of the earlier morning had departed, and among all the dejected faces round the table hers was conspicuously the worst.

There seemed a special meaning in the Bible reading that morning, and when Miss Phipps laid aside the book she added a few words of her own before kneeling in prayer. The sternness had left her face, but it was very grave and sad.

“Before we kneel down together this morning, girls, there are some thoughts which I would like to impress upon you all. We are in trouble, and it behoves each one of us to ask in all earnestness that the cloud may be lifted, and that courage and truthfulness may be given where it is most needed. An accident, however regrettable, is not a serious offence, but in this instance it has been turned into one by the refusal of the culprit to acknowledge her offence. I have made every inquiry, and it seems morally certain that one of you must know how it happened, and be able to give a satisfactory explanation; and until she does so, the shadow of her deceit must fall on all. I ask those of you who know that they are blameless to pray for her who is guilty, that she may acknowledge her fault, and for yourselves that you be preserved from temptation; and I ask the guilty one to remember that God reads all hearts, and although she may deceive her companions, she can hide nothing from His eyes. And now we will kneel and pray, and let the words which you say be no vain repetition, but the earnest cry of your hearts that God will help us!”

Many of the girls had tears in their eyes as they rose from their knees, and no one was surprised when, as they filed slowly towards the door, Miss Phipps spoke again, to request Pixie O’Shaughnessy to follow her to her private sanctum. Flora thrust her hand through Lottie’s arm as they went upstairs and heaved a sigh of funereal proportions.

“Poor little Pixie! Don’t you pity her? Oh, Lottie, you are lucky to have been out last night and escape all this bother! I wish I had had an invitation too, and then, even if Pixie doesn’t confess, no one could possibly think that I had done it. Poor little thing! She is so scared that she hardly knows what she is doing. Did you notice her face at breakfast? Did you hear about the accident when you came in last night, or who told you first?”

“I only saw the teachers last night, but Mademoiselle was crying, and I knew something was wrong. Then Pixie came to my room this morning to bring me back my collar, and she told me. It seems that she is suspected because she won’t tell why she was in Mademoiselle’s room. It’s very stupid of her! There can’t be any great mystery about it, one would think, though she wouldn’t tell even me; but if she says she didn’t break the bottle, I think she ought to be believed. She has always been truthful, so far as we know.”

“Yes, but then we haven’t known her long, and she has never been in a corner before. It is easy to tell the truth when all is going smoothly, but it’s rather dreadful when you know quite well you are going to be punished; and if you let the first moment pass it’s fifty times worse, because then you have been deceitful as well. What I’m afraid of is that she was too frightened to own up last night—you know what a scarey little thing she is—and that now she is determined to be obstinate and brave it out!”

Lottie hitched her shoulder with an impatient movement which drew her arm free from her companion.

“Well, I’m fond of Pixie O’Shaughnessy, and I am going to stick to her, whatever happens! It’s mean of Mademoiselle to make such a fuss about an accident which nobody could help. I’ll buy her another scent-bottle myself, if that will satisfy her. I have lots of money, and can get as much more as I want. It’s absurd making thirty people miserable for the sake of a few pounds. I’ll ask Miss Phipps if I may go into town and buy one this very day.”

“She wouldn’t let you spend so much without your mother’s consent, and it’s my belief Mademoiselle wouldn’t take it if she did. It was the association she liked, and you could not give her that. I’m fond of Pixie too, but I shan’t like her a bit if she gets us all into trouble, and that’s what it will mean if she is obstinate. We shall have all our treats and holidays knocked off until the truth comes out. It is bound to be discovered sooner or later, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t! Lots of things are never discovered, and the holidays will be here in a month, thank goodness! It will have to drop after that, for it wouldn’t be fair to drag the troubles of one term into the next. I don’t know what Margaret is going to do, but I shall be kind to Pixie and try to help her!”

The girls had reached the schoolroom by this time and joined the group by the fire, so that Margaret herself was able to reply.

“I shall certainly help her if I can,” she said gently; but her followers noticed that she avoided giving any opinion as to guilt or innocence, and the reticence depressed them still further, for it was unlike Margaret to refrain from speaking a good word if it was possible to do so.

She was soon to have an opportunity of trying to help, however, for half an hour later Miss Phipps called her out of class, and said sadly—

“I can make nothing of Pixie, Margaret. Will you try what you can do? She seems afraid of me, though I have tried to be as forbearing as possible, and perhaps she may speak more freely to a girl like herself. So long as she refuses to say what she was doing in Mademoiselle’s room we cannot help believing her to be guilty. I am dreadfully upset about it all, and should be so thankful to get at the truth. I have heard of this kind of thing going on in other schools, but this is my first experience, and I earnestly hope it will be the last. She is in my snuggery. Go to her there, and see what your influence will do!”

Margaret went, and, at the first opening of the door, Pixie rushed into her arms with a cry of joyous welcome.

“Oh, Margaret, I hoped you would come! I wanted you to come. I’m so dreadfully miserable.”

“So are we all, Pixie, but you can end the misery if you will only tell us truthfully all you know about this accident. You do know something, I feel certain, or why should you be so afraid to speak? It’s no use being afraid, dear. We all have to do difficult things sometimes, whether we like them or not, and it will only get worse as time goes on. The truth is bound to come out, and then how ashamed you will feel, if you have not taken the opportunity while it was yours!”

“Do you think it will be found out, really?” Pixie shivered, and twisted her fingers together in nervous fashion. “But how can it if I don’t tell, and if—if there is no one else?”

“I don’t know, Pixie, but I believe it will, sooner or later. It may be later, for God is very patient, and waits to give us our chance before He takes things into His own hands. In the days when Jesus was on earth He used to work miracles, but He doesn’t do that any longer. I used to be sorry for that, but I am not now, for it is so wonderful that He lets us help Him by putting it into our hearts to do His will. He won’t show us in any miraculous way who is deceiving us now, but if she will listen He will speak to her, and make it seem impossible to go on doing wrong.”

“That’s what Bridgie said!” agreed Pixie eagerly. “It was the night before I came to school, and she was speaking to me for my good. ‘You’ll be far away from home,’ she said, ‘but you never need be far from Him, and He is your best friend. When you are happy and everything is bright, thank Him for it, for it’s a shame to be always asking, asking, and never saying a “Thank you” for what you receive. And when you are undecided between two ways, take the one that’s hardest, for that was what He meant by bearing the cross; and when you are in trouble, keep still,’ she says, ‘keep still, and you’ll hear His voice in your heart.’ And I was thinking of that last night, and I could hear Bridgie saying it all over again, as plain as if she were by my side!”

“And the other voice, Pixie—did you hear that too?”

“I tried to, but,”—the small troubled face was pitiful to behold—“it seemed always to say the things I wanted, and I was afraid I was imagining. Then I remembered about doing the hardest thing, and every time I awoke I thought of it again, and this morning I decided that I would!”

“Pixie!” cried Margaret, in a tone of almost incredulous relief. “Oh, Pixie, you will really! I am so glad, so glad! You will come with me to Miss Phipps now, and tell all you know!”

But Pixie shook her head firmly, and her lips closed in determined lines.

“I will never tell,” she said. “I’ll be silent for ever!”

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