When Ruby went to bed that night her last thought was of the caterpillars and of the pleasure they would give her teacher, and she was impatient for the morning to come that she might have Miss Ketchum tell her how much she had enjoyed them.
Miss Ketchum did not go up to her room after study hour, but after supper she went up for something, intending to return to the sitting-room at once, as she had charge of the girls that evening. It was almost dark in her room, but she did not stop to light the lamp, as she knew where to get her work-basket in the dark. In passing the bureau she put out her hand and knocked something off, but stooping down on the floor and picking it up again, she concluded that it was merely an empty paper-box, such as Mrs. Boardman often put in her room when she found one, to use as a home for her pets. The cover rolled away, but Miss Ketchum did not stop to look for it, and went down to the sitting room again.
Of course you can guess what happened. Whether the caterpillars were asleep or not when the box fell, I could not tell you, but after that they were certainly very wide-awake, for they travelled out of the box and all over the room. Before Miss Ketchum had come up to go to bed they had made their way all over the room. There were some of them on the ceiling, some crawling over the white counter-pane on Miss Ketchum's bed, some upon her pillow, and a very fat, large caterpillar, that Ruby had found upon a tomato-plant, had crept up on the looking-glass and had gone to sleep there.
Miss Ketchum was very much interested in caterpillars, but of course she did not want to have them walking all about her room in this way; so you can imagine how surprised and perhaps a little frightened she was when she came upstairs to bed, and struck a light, and saw the caterpillars making themselves quite at home all about her room. She could not understand it at first, and then it occurred to her that perhaps some of the girls had been playing a trick upon her, and had put them in the room to annoy her. Some of the scholars were unkind enough to tease Miss Ketchum sometimes, and it would not have surprised her if this had been the case to-night.
At last she remembered the box, and picking up the cover, she saw written carefully upon it, "With Ruby's love," and then she knew how it had happened.
Ruby had put them there to please her, and if the cover had stayed on the box, the caterpillars would have been quite safe, and would have been in their prison yet; but she remembered having knocked the box down, and it was undoubtedly then that they strayed out and wandered about the room.
Poor Miss Ketchum! She sighed as she looked about the room. She could not go to bed and perhaps have the caterpillars creeping all over her in the night, and yet it seemed like a hopeless task to catch them, and she had no idea how many there were.
But Ruby had meant to be so kind that she thought more of her little scholar's affection for her than she did of the work she had so unintentionally given her.
One by one she patiently captured them and returned them to their box. She was not quite sure that she had got them all when she put the last one in, but there were so many that she felt tolerably certain that Ruby could not possibly have found more in one day.
It was quite late before she finally got to bed, and while Ruby was sound asleep and dreaming of Miss Ketchum's delight when she should find the addition to her pets, Miss Ketchum was smiling to herself as she thought of Ruby's intended kindness, and how it had turned out. She made up her mind that Ruby should not know that the caterpillars had escaped, but that she should think that her gift had given all the pleasure that it was intended to, and so Ruby never knew of poor Miss Ketchum's caterpillar hunt at bed-time.
The next day Miss Ketchum thanked her for them, and explained to her that she would have to set some of them at liberty again, since she had some of a good many of the varieties, and two of each were all that she could take care of; but Ruby was delighted to hear that Miss Ketchum had never had some of the specimens before, and that she was quite sure that they would make beautiful butterflies.
After this Ruby and Miss Ketchum were as good friends as Agnes had always been with her teacher, and Miss Ketchum found it a great help to have two little girls, instead of one, upon whom she could always rely for good behavior, and who could be trusted never to wilfully annoy her.
She had a great many treasures in her room that had been brought to her from China by a brother who had been a missionary there, and she was always glad to have Agnes and Ruby come and pay her a little visit, and look at whatever they wished. She knew they could be trusted to handle things carefully and not be meddlesome, and many a happy hour the two girls spent there. Miss Ketchum's room was a very large room, as it was the only one over the school-house, so she had plenty of space to keep all her curiosities and her pets.
There was a little cupboard that stood in a corner, just as if it had been built for that particular space, and in this corner closet Miss Ketchum kept a little tin of delicious seed-cakes, and some cups and saucers, and pretty little plates with butterflies, and mandarins, and pagodas, and Chinese beauties upon them; and very often when the girls came to see her she would open this cupboard and they would have a little treat, which seemed all the more delightful because the plates were so odd. There was an open fireplace in the room, and when the days were cold and there was a snapping, blazing wood-fire, they used to ask Miss Ketchum if they might not bring their chestnuts and roast them in the hot ashes.
Miss Ketchum knew a great many stories, too, and sometimes, on Saturday afternoon, when the children had plenty of time, and would surely not have to hurry away in the most interesting part of the story, she would lean back in her big rocking-chair, and with the little girls sitting on ottomans, one each side of her, she would tell them delightful stories about when she was a little girl and went to school. Ruby and Agnes were glad that they did not live then, when there was no whole holiday on Saturday, but they were very much interested in hearing all that Miss Ketchum had to tell them, and in comparing the things that she did when she went to school with what they did themselves.
Altogether Miss Ketchum was a very delightful friend to have, if, she was a little forgetful sometimes, and did like caterpillars; but Ruby and Agnes grew almost as fond of her pets as she was herself, as they learned how much there was of interest about them. They looked forward quite eagerly to the time when, instead of the ugly worm that had woven a chrysalis about himself and gone to sleep for the winter, there should burst forth a beautiful butterfly. It made them more careful not to hurt creeping things, and if they found a brown worm crawling about where he might be stepped upon, the girls would always pick him up carefully upon a stick or leaf and put him in a safe place where he might keep out of danger.
The September days passed away and the October days came and found Ruby both happy and good. She had not forgotten her home nor her dear mother and father, but she was learning to love her new home very dearly, and she had tried so hard to be good and give the teachers as little trouble as possible that they were all very fond of her. She found her lessons very pleasant, and as she loved study and was ambitious to always have perfect lessons she was very near the head in all her classes.
Twice a week she wrote long letters home to her mother, and told her all about her doings; and her mother was so much better that she was able to write to Ruby two or three times a week,—such loving letters that Ruby always wished for a little while that she could put herself in an envelope and send herself home to her mother, instead of waiting for Christmas. Ruby was doing so well that both her Aunt Emma and her father and mother wanted her to stay until the end of the term at any rate. Ruby hoped that when she went home she would be able to take with her at least one of the five prizes which were to be given at Christmas. There was a composition prize, a deportment prize, a prize for grammar, one for spelling, and one for improvement in music. Ruby had worked so hard in all her classes, and had been so careful to keep all the rules, that she was quite sure that she should take at least one prize home with her to show her father and mother how hard she had tried to be good.
If Ruthy could only have been with her, Ruby would have been quite contented; but with all her new friends she still missed the dear little friend who had been like a sister to her all her life.
A great many things that had seemed hard to Ruby when she first came were becoming so natural to her now that she never thought anything about them. The courtesying was no longer any trouble to her; on the contrary, she really liked it, and she amused her Aunt Emma one day by telling her that she thought that when she went home she should always courtesy to her father and mother when she went out of the room; for if it was respectful to courtesy to her teachers, it was certainly respectful to courtesy to any one else of whom she thought a great deal. She had learned to like egg-plant just as well as she did anything else, so her trouble over that had melted away into thin air; and she had found Agnes Van Kirk a very good friend to have, for she was a little girl who tried very hard to do right herself, and helped Ruby to do right, too.
Agnes was going to be a teacher some day, she hoped, and she was very fond of talking to Ruby about her plans. She was going to have a large boarding-school, and she was not quite sure whether she would have her girls courtesy or not when they went out of a room.
"Perhaps it will be old-fashioned by that time, you know," she said to Ruby, when the two girls had counted how many years must pass away before Agnes should have completed her education and opened her school. "Of course I should not teach my girls to do old-fashioned things, that would make people laugh at them, but I want them to do everything that is nice. I mean to be such a teacher as Miss Chapman. She never scolds, but all the girls mind her, and even those who break the rules always wish they had n't when she looks at them. I can hardly wait, I am in such a hurry to begin my school."
"And I will come and see you, and look at the girls the way that lady looked at us the other day when she came to visit the school," said Ruby. "Do you remember how beautifully she was dressed, Agnes, and how pretty she was? I wonder if she meant to send her little girl here, and that was why she came. Won't it be fun to go and visit your school when I don't have any of the lessons to study, nor anything. I will be very grand, and they will never guess that we used to be little girls and go to school together. I don't want to be a school-teacher, though."
"What do you want to be?" asked Agnes.
"I think I shall write books," announced Ruby.
"Why, what ever made you think of that?" asked Agnes, in astonishment. "You don't even like to write compositions, and how could you ever write books?"
"Oh, compositions are different from books," returned Ruby, airily. "I am sure I could write poetry, I like it so much. There is n't anything I like better than poetry day. I wish it was poetry day every Friday, instead of every other one being compositions. I don't think compositions are at all interesting. We have to write a composition for next time upon one of our walks. I think I will write about our walk this afternoon. I don't think there is ever very much to write about the walks we take. We just go out two and two, and we see the same things every time, and that is all there is of it."
"Perhaps something may happen to-day to give you something to write about," Agnes answered; and though she had only spoken in fun, without any idea that her words would come true, something did happen that afternoon, quite out of the usual course, and I am not sure but that Ruby would have rather that it had not happened, and that she would have had less to write about.
Miss Ketchum announced at the close of the afternoon school that the girls would go for their walk half an hour earlier than usual, as they were going to gather persimmons, and would want to have more time than for their regular walk.
This gathering of persimmons was a treat looked forward to by the girls, and they were very much pleased when they heard that they were to go this afternoon. They each had a little basket in which to bring home their spoils, and Ruby was quite as excited as the rest of them, wondering whether she would find enough to fill her basket. It was the first of November, and there had been several slight frosts, which, Ruby heard the teachers say, ought to ripen the persimmons.
"That is funny," she said to herself. "I should think it would spoil persimmons to be frozen. I never heard of anything being better because it had been out in the frost. I wonder what persimmons are like, anyway."
Ruby had never seen any persimmons in her life, as they did not grow near her home, and she had a vague idea that they were like apples, only smaller, perhaps. It did not take the girls very long to get ready, and in a little while they were all on their way, so happy that it was hard work to keep in procession, and not lose step with each other.
It was a beautiful day. The sky was so blue that not the tiniest little white cloud was floating about upon it anywhere, and the air was not very cold. There was just enough frostiness to make warm wraps very pleasant, and to make the girls find a brisk gait delightful.
The leaves had all dropped from the trees, and their bare, brown limbs stood out sharp and clear against the sky, and Ruby wondered whether the persimmons would not have fallen from the tree, too. She did n't ask any questions, however, but made up her mind to wait and see for herself. It was very hard for Ruby to admit that she did not know anything; and although Agnes could have told her all about the persimmons, she preferred to wait rather than ask her.
It was quite a long walk to the field where the persimmon-tree grew which was considered the special property of the school. In the woods there were several persimmon-trees, but the boys knew where those persimmons grew, and gathered them as soon as they ripened, and very often before they were ready to eat; so it was of no use going there to look for any. This tree stood in a field that belonged to a friend of Miss Chapman's, and he always kept it just for the girls, and was willing to send out his man to shake the tree and knock the persimmons down for them, if Jack Frost had not done it already. As soon as they reached the field, and the bars were let down, the girls could break their ranks and rush for the persimmon-tree, which grew in the middle of the field. It did not look very inviting, Ruby thought, as she ran along with the others. All the leaves had dropped off except a few which dangled as if the next puff of wind would send them down upon the ground with the others; and the persimmons, which hung thickly upon the branches, did not look at all as Ruby had fancied that they would.
There were several lying upon the ground, and Ruby wondered at the girls for picking them up so eagerly. They were all shrivelled, and the least touch would break their skins. Indeed some of them in falling had broken, and were lying in bunches, all mashed together. Ruby did not want any such looking persimmons as those, and she looked carefully about for nice round ones, that were firm and hard.
"Come over here, Ruby," called Agnes. "Here are ever so many, and such nice ones. I am getting lots."
Ruby glanced over and saw that those in Agnes' basket were just the kind that she did not want.
"I see some here," she answered, and so she picked up the firm, hard fruit as quickly as she could.
Presently she wondered what they tasted like, and she put one in her mouth.
Did you ever have your mouth puckered up by a green persimmon? If you have, then you will know just how Ruby's mouth felt; and if you have not, you must imagine it, for I am sure I cannot tell you about it. It was a very green persimmon that Ruby had tasted, and she had taken such a bite of it before she could stop herself that it seemed to her as though she would never be able to open her mouth again. She was quite frightened at the way her mouth felt, and her eyes filled with tears as she went over to Agnes.
"Oh, it has done something to my mouth, and puckered it all up," she said, trying to keep from crying. "I never had such a dreadful feeling in my mouth. Do you suppose it will ever come out again? Oh, it is worse than a toothache, it truly is."
"You must have eaten one that was not quite ripe," said Agnes. "Let me see; oh, that one would pucker your mouth dreadfully, for it is n't nearly ready to eat yet. See, it is only these soft ones that are ripe, and the hard ones will all pucker one's mouth."
"And I thought that these soft ones were n't good," said Ruby, in dismay, "and I have gathered only these old puckery ones. I could not think what you picked up the squashed ones for."
How many times that afternoon Ruby wished she had known more about persimmons, or that she had asked some of the other girls something about them.
Her mouth seemed to grow more puckery every moment, and she wondered whether it would ever be any better. It did not feel as if it would, and she could not be persuaded to taste a ripe persimmon, for she had had enough of persimmons. She emptied her basket out, and did not want to touch another, though the girls assured her that the ripe ones were delicious.
She was very glad when at last the girls had gathered as many as they wanted, and they were ready to go home again.
She went upstairs to her room, and Aunt Emma did what she could to relieve the puckered little mouth; but there was but little that could be done except to wait patiently for time to take the puckers out of it.
Ruby was quite sure that it would take a year, and when she woke up the following morning and found that there was nothing to remind her of the persimmon, she was delighted as well as surprised, but it was a long time before she wanted to hear any more about persimmons.
If Maude's mother could have looked into the school and watched her little daughter for a day, I am sure she would have found it hard to believe that she was the same child as the selfish, self-willed little girl, who had made every one else miserable as well as herself if she could not have her own way when she was at home.
School life was very hard for Maude in a great many ways, and she had been more homesick than any of the other girls,—not so much because she wanted to see her father and mother as because she wanted to go where she could have her own way and do as she pleased.
All her life she had been accustomed to having her own way, and after such training it was very hard for her to submit to the same rules to which the other girls had to submit, and to obey her teachers. It was a new experience to her to find that her fine clothes did not win for her any esteem, and that unless she showed herself kind and obliging to her schoolmates, they did not care to have anything to do with her.
It was not altogether Maude's fault that she had been so selfish; it was partly because she had never been taught to be unselfish, and she had grown so used to putting herself and her own comfort before that of every one else, that it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do, and she was surprised when every one else did not do so too. Nothing could have been better for her than to come to this quiet home school, where she could find a friend who would take the trouble to help her correct her faults as Mrs. Boardman did.
Maude had never really loved any one before in all her life. She had valued others only for what they did for her, but now she was learning to love from a better reason than that. She really tried to please Mrs. Boardman by obeying the rules and trying to study her lessons, and though it was hard for her to keep up with her class, Mrs. Boardman encouraged her because she could see that Maude was really doing her best.
If Maude grew discouraged, and began to think that it was of no use for her to try to learn, that she would never be able to learn her lessons and get up to the head of any of her classes, Mrs. Boardman would tell her how much she had improved since she first came, and encourage her to try again.
For the first few weeks Maude found herself frequently in disgrace. It seemed almost impossible for her to understand that she must obey without arguing the point, and that she must not be quarrelsome nor selfish in her intercourse with the other scholars. If Maude had been in a large school where she would not have had any one to help her, she might not have improved so much; but in this little school, where it was more like a family than a boarding-school, she was helped to conquer herself just as wisely as she could have been by a wise mother.
When at last she really learned that no one cared for her father's money nor her mother's servants, nor her own jewelry, which she was not allowed to wear, and had to content herself with exhibiting, she began to wish that there was something about herself which should win the love of her schoolmates.
She had made such an unpleasant impression upon them at first that they were not very anxious to make friends with her, but as they saw that she was really trying to make herself pleasant, they were more willing to invite her to join in their games and share their amusements.
She did not talk so much about her possessions, and tried to care more about others and their happiness. But all this was hard work. It is not an easy matter to be selfish and wilful and then all at once become thoughtful of others, and of their comfort; and many and many a night Maude sobbed herself to sleep, quite discouraged with the efforts she had to make to do things that seemed to come as a matter of course to the other girls.
Mrs. Boardman had grown to love the lonely little girl, when she saw how much she needed a friend, and how grateful she was for the kindness which was shown her; and sometimes she would ask Miss Chapman to let Maude spend the night with her, when she found that the little girl was very homesick and discouraged.
Perhaps because she had never known before what it was to have a friend who really wanted to help her make the most of herself, Maude loved Mrs. Boardman with all her heart, and she really tried and kept on trying, so that she should not disappoint the one who took so much interest in her.
Mrs. Boardman could see how the little girl improved from one week to another, and though there was still much room for improvement, and it might take months and perhaps years to undo the effect of Maude's early training in selfishness, yet there was a great deal that was very sweet and lovable in her character, hidden away under all the dross; and Mrs. Boardman knew that if she kept on trying to improve, some day she would be a very sweet girl, and one who would win love from all around her.
Every hour Maude learned something that was of use to her, for she had much more to learn than many of her schoolmates. In the first place she had always thought that work was something that belonged only to servants, and that a lady would not know how to do anything about the house; but here Miss Chapman insisted upon each little girl's caring for her own room, and insisted that the work should be carefully and well done, and the general feeling among the girls was that it was something to be proud of when their rooms won commendation from Mrs. Boardman.
Maude no longer felt that it was a disgrace to be obliged to make her own bed, but on the contrary, she took a great deal of pride in making it so well that when Mrs. Boardman went around to look at the rooms after the girls had gone into school, she could find nothing to reprove, but on the contrary could leave a little card with "Good" upon the pillow.
Once a week there was a cooking-class which the girls attended in turn, and Maude was as proud as any of the other girls could have been upon the day when she made a plate of nice light biscuit all by herself, for supper; and she looked forward with a good deal of pleasure to the time when she should show her mother how much she could do.
Miss Chapman did not believe in education making little girls useless at home, but she tried to have them taught practical things as well as the more ornamental ones, for she wanted them to grow up useful as well as accomplished women.
So the scholars learned to sweep and dust, to make beds, and bread and cake, while they studied their other lessons; and when they went home in vacation times their mothers found them very useful little maids.
Maude had not made any special friends among the girls. In her time out of school hours she stayed with Mrs. Boardman as much as she could, and her teacher was very kind about letting the little girl come to her room whenever she wanted to, and curl up in the big rocking-chair and watch Mrs. Boardman as she sat by the window in her low sewing-chair and did the piles of mending which accumulated every week.
The boxes of cake and candy which Maude had been so anxious that her mother should send her were not permitted to any of the scholars at Miss Chapman's school. Perhaps one reason why they were so well, and the doctor seldom, if ever, paid any of them, a visit, was because they ate such good, wholesome food and were not allowed to spoil their appetites with candy.
Once a week they had candy, and then it seemed all the nicer because it was such a treat. A little old woman kept a candy store some little distance down the street, and the girls were allowed to go down there Saturday mornings and buy five cents' worth of candy. This little old woman was quite famous among the scholars for her molasses cocoanut candy, and they almost always bought that kind of candy.
As Ruby said to her Aunt Emma after she had been to school a few Saturdays,—
"It looks very nice, and is good, and then you get more of it for five cents than any other kind of candy, so it is really the best kind to buy, you see."
The old woman always expected Miss Chapman's young ladies every Saturday, and had nice little bags of candy all tied up, ready for them, so that she should not keep them waiting; and if the day was stormy, and she knew that they would not be allowed to go out, she took a covered basketful of candy-bags up to the school, that they might make their purchases there.
Saturday morning was a very pleasant one at school. There was a short study hour, which was really a half-hour, and then the girls wrote letters home, or visited each other in their rooms.
In the afternoon they put on their very best dresses, and had a nicer supper than usual, and almost every Saturday evening the minister and his wife came and took that meal with them.
He was not at all like the minister Ruby had known at home all her life, and whenever she looked at him, she wondered how it was possible for so young a man to be a minister. He never asked any of the girls whether they knew the catechism or not, and Ruby was quite disappointed at this, though I do not think any of the other girls wanted to say it. Ruby was so sure that she knew it perfectly, even the longest and hardest answers, that she was always glad of a chance to show how well she knew it. Perhaps if the others had known it as well, they might have been willing to say it, but as it was, they were quite satisfied that he never asked for it; and Maude, who did not know a word of it, and who had all she could do to learn what her teachers required of her, would have been quite discouraged, I am afraid, if the recitation of the catechism each week had been added to her other tasks.
Sunday morning the scholars slept nearly an hour longer than usual, and this was looked upon as a great treat, particularly in the winter months when it was scarcely light before seven. It seemed very early rising to get up by lamp-light, and all the girls were quite ready to take the extra hour of sleep upon Sunday mornings.
After breakfast, which was always nicer than upon other days, when they had made their rooms tidy, and prepared themselves for church, all but their coats and hats, Miss Chapman called them down to the school-room to study a Bible lesson for half an hour.
By this time the church bell would begin to ring, and they would go up to their rooms and get ready to start, and then the little procession would start out just as they did when they went to walk, only, instead of one of the girls walking at the head, Miss Chapman and Miss Ketchum were there, and the girls followed them.
It was a very short walk, just across the street, so it was not necessary to start until the second bell had begun to ring. The girls would have been very glad if it had been a little longer walk, but it only took two or three minutes to walk down to the crossing at the corner, and then go across to the pretty vine-covered church.
Miss Chapman had one rule that none of the girls liked at all, and yet it was one for which they were all very glad when they had grown older, and did not have to follow it unless they wished.
It was her rule that the girls should all listen very attentively to the sermon, remember the text, and the chapter from which it was taken, and then when they came home they were required, after dinner, to spend an hour in writing down all that they could remember of the sermon. At first Ruby was sure that she never could remember anything to write down afterwards, and though she listened as hard as she could, and did her very best to remember, all that she could possibly keep in her head was the text, and one sentence, the sentence with which Mr. Morsell began his sermon; but she soon found that by listening very closely and trying to remember, she grew able to remember much more.
Some of the older girls, who had been with Miss Chapman for two and three years, and were accustomed to this practice, could write down a really good epitome of the sermon, and once in a while a scholar did so well that Miss Chapman would send her work over to the minister, and the next time he came to tea he would compliment her for it; and that not only pleased the scholar, but made all the others determine to do so well that their extracts, too, should be sent over to him sometimes.
Mr. Morsell always remembered what young hearers he had, and he never failed to put something in his sermon that even Ruby and Maude could understand and remember, if they tried hard enough; so it was a great deal easier for them than if he had preached only for grown-up people.
Each girl had a blank-book, and after Miss Chapman had looked her extracts over, she required the scholars to copy these extracts into their blank-books.
Ruby was quite pleased when she found that each Sunday she could remember more and more, and that where five lines contained all that she remembered of the first sermon, it soon took two pages to hold all that she could write.
She was glad that she had to copy it in this blank-book, for then she could take it home with her at Christmas, and show it to her father and mother and Ruthy; and everything that she did she always wanted to show them, or tell them about, for she never forgot the dear ones. Maude was learning to remember nicely, too. She was not at all a dull little girl. It was only that she had not been accustomed to use her mind when she came to the school, and it had taken her some little time to learn to keep her thoughts upon anything, and really study. She was quite pleased when she found that in this exercise of memory she was doing quite as well as any of the new scholars, and better than four or five of them could do.
After a while, when the girls grew older, and finished learning all that they could study with Miss Chapman, and some, perhaps, did not go to school any more, they were very glad that they had learned to listen so attentively; for any one of those little girls who practised listening to the sermon and remembering all they could of it, and then strengthened their memory by writing it down afterwards, found that they had a great deal to be glad of in this training. Even after they grew up, they were so in the habit of listening attentively that they never heard a sermon without being able to remember a great deal of it; so their memories were not like sieves, through which a great deal could run, but in which very little, or perhaps nothing, would remain.
But they did not realize then how good it was for them, for even grown-up people very seldom realize that, and so the girls grumbled a good deal sometimes, when they had to sit down on Sunday afternoon and write out what they could remember.
There was one thing, however, which the girls soon discovered. It did not make it any easier to grumble about it, and the sooner one set to work in good earnest, the more one was likely to remember of the sermon, and the sooner the task was accomplished; and they had the rest of the afternoon to themselves until Bible-class hour just before tea-time.
Then Miss Chapman heard them say the catechism, and talked to them and heard them recite the Bible lesson which they had studied that morning. The time between writing the sermon and the Bible class was always a pleasant time to the scholars. They sat in one another's rooms and talked, or if it was a pleasant day they went out and walked about the garden. While Miss Chapman would not allow any loud laughing nor playing on this day, yet she was glad to have it one which the girls would enjoy as much as possible, and would look back upon with pleasure.
There was always some special dainty for tea, and then, after tea, the girls all gathered around the piano in the parlor, and Miss Emma played hymns for them, and they sang until it was time to go to bed. They all enjoyed this. Even the girls who could not sing very well themselves liked to hear the others sing, and they were sorry when the old clock in the hall struck the bed-time hour.
Every Sunday seemed such a long step towards the holidays when they should go home and see their fathers and mothers again. While after the first week or two none of the girls were homesick, and all were very happy, yet there was not one of them who had not a little square of paper near the head of her bed, with as many marks upon it as there were days before vacation began, and every morning the first thing they did was to scratch one of these marks off. So Sunday seemed a long step ahead when they looked back over seven days that had passed.
Agnes and Ruby generally spent the leisure part of Sunday afternoon with Miss Ketchum. She was very fond of the little girls, and liked to have them come and see her, so they had a very pleasant time in her room.
They would save their bags of candy, instead of eating them on Saturday, and Miss Ketchum would have a nice little plain cake, of which her little visitors were very fond, and then they would take down the dishes and have a very nice time.
While they were enjoying the good things Miss Ketchum would read to them, or they would see which could tell her the most about the extracts they had written from the sermon. They had such pleasant times with her that they were always sorry when the boll rang for Bible class, and they had to say good-by and run away.
Altogether, Sunday was a very happy day at Miss Chapman's, not only to Ruby and Agnes, but to all the other scholars, and they were always ready to welcome it.
All the girls had a great deal of Christmas preparation. In the evenings they were busy making their Christmas presents for their friends at home, and Ruby was delighted when her Aunt Emma taught her how to knit wristlets. She was very proud when she had finished the first pair for her mother. They had pretty red edges and the rest was knitted of chinchilla wool.
Perhaps you would laugh at Ruby if I should tell you quite how much she admired them. When she first began to knit she wished that she need not practise nor study nor do anything else, she enjoyed her new occupation so much; and she carried her wristlet around in her pocket, wrapped up in a piece of paper, so that it should not become soiled, and every little while she would take it out and look at it lovingly.
She could imagine her mother's surprise and pleasure when she should give them to her, and tell her that her little girl had knitted every stitch of them for her. There were a great many stitches in the wristlets, and before the first pair was finished Ruby had grown very tired of knitting; but she was willing to persevere when she thought of the pleasure it would be to give them to her mother as her very own Christmas gift to her.
The pair she was making for her father did not take her nearly so long to make, even although they were larger, for she had learned to knit so much more quickly; and she was quite proud of the way in which the needles flashed in her busy little fingers.
Ruby had brought her doll to school with her, and she found her great company when she went up to her room, although she was such a busy little maiden that she did not find much time in which to play with her. Sometimes she would take her over to Miss Ketchum's room and leave her for a few days, so that when she went there for a little visit she would find her doll waiting for her, but generally Ruby had so many other things in which she was interested that she did not find time to play with her child.
But she was making something for Ruthy's Christmas present in which she needed her doll's help very much. Aunt Emma was showing Ruby how to crochet the dearest little baby sacque and hood, for a gift to Ruthy, and as Ruthy's doll was just exactly the same size as Ruby's, Ruby could try the sacque upon her own doll every now and then, and be quite sure that she was getting it the right size.
It was a pretty little white sacque with a rose-colored border, and it was so very pretty that Ruby made up her mind that after Christmas, when she should not have so much to do, she would make another just like it for her own doll. The hood was made to match the sacque, and Ruby could hardly wait for Christmas to come when she thought of the happiness her gifts would give. She was impatient to hear Ruthy exclaim with admiration over the beautiful sacque and hood, and to see how proud her father and mother would be when she slipped the wristlets upon their hands, and told them that she had taken every stitch for them with her own fingers.
But besides these home preparations, there was to be a little entertainment given at Christmas by the scholars, to which some of the people of the village were always invited, besides the friends of the day-scholars, and those of the boarding-scholars who could come. This entertainment was given the evening before the girls left for their Christmas holidays, so very often their parents came a day earlier to take them home, in order to be present at this entertainment.
It was given to show the improvement of the scholars during the term, and all the girls had some part to take in it.
To some of them this was a great trial, but Ruby delighted in showing off, and she was perfectly happy when she found that she was to take part three times. It added to her pleasure to have her father write that he would surely be there, for he was coming to bring her home, as Aunt Emma was going somewhere else for her Christmas holidays. So Ruby practised and studied with all her might, as happy and as good a little girl as you could find anywhere, enjoying school-life more every day.
Ruby was to play the bass part in a duet with one of the older girls, and she had taken lessons such a little while that this seemed a very great thing to her. She was always ready to practise, so that she should be sure to know her part perfectly, and she went about the house humming the tune, until Aunt Emma declared laughingly that she fully expected to hear Ruby singing it in her sleep.
Besides this, Ruby was to recite a piece alone, and to take part in a dialogue; so you can see that she had quite a good deal to do. She would have been quite willing to do more, however, and she looked forward very eagerly to the evening of the entertainment.
The dialogue was quite a long one, and Ruby studied it every morning while she was getting dressed, pretending that her aunt and the stove were the other two characters in the piece. To be sure, neither of them said anything, for Aunt Emma was busy getting dressed, and the stove was silent, of course; but Ruby knew what they should say, for she had studied the piece so much that she knew the other parts nearly as well as her own; so she said for them what should be said when their part came, and then repeated her own speeches. There was no danger that Ruby would not be fully prepared when the great evening came.
It did not seem possible, now that she looked backward, that she had really been away from home so long. Each day had been so full of duties and pleasures, and had passed so rapidly, that they had gone almost before Ruby knew that they had commenced, and now there were only very few marks left to be scratched out upon the girls' calendars.
Ruby was very sorry for Agnes. Her mother lived so far away that it was not possible for her to go home until the long summer vacation came, so Agnes had to spend her Christmas at school.
The teachers did all they could to make the day a happy one for her, and her mother sent her a box of presents, but still that was not of course anything like a home Christmas, and it generally made Agnes feel very badly when she heard the other girls talking about the good times they expected to have at Christmas.
"It is n't only the parties and the Christmas trees and the good times," she said to Ruby one day. "It is being away from mother that is the hardest part of it all. I always put her picture on the table when I open the box and look at the presents she has sent me, and try to pretend that she is giving them to me; but it is n't of much use. I know all the time that she is hundreds of miles away, and that she wants to see me just as much as I want to see her."
It was just one week before Christmas that a very beautiful idea came into Ruby's mind, and she was so pleased that she jumped up and spun around like a top, and caught Agnes by the waist and made her spin around, too, until both the little girls tumbled down in a heap on the floor.
"Why, Ruby, are you crazy?" asked Agnes, laughingly. They had been sitting before the fire in Miss Ketchum's room, eating chestnuts and talking about the evening of the entertainment, and both of the girls had been quiet for a little while, Agnes thinking how much she would like to have her mother at the school that night, and Ruby thinking of the pleasure with which she would watch her father while she was reciting her piece, when all at once she jumped up in this state of excitement.