Thiswas no idle threat. For days Florence spent much time and thought in devising various plans for revenging herself; but for a long while she could not hit on any thing satisfactory.
At last, one day, as she was sitting in her room, she flung her book on the table and clapped her hands, exclaiming,—
“I have it! I have it!”
Her room-mates looked up in surprise.
“What is it?” both asked.
“Oh, my lesson: that’s all,” returned Florence, quietly. She rose, and, beckoning to Carrie to follow her, passed out of the room. Carrie obeyed the signal, and found her friend waiting for her in the hall.
“Come with me,” she said, leading the wayout of the house, and through winding paths away to a secluded spot at the very extremity of the grounds. Here she stopped.
“Well, what now?” asked Carrie, who had followed her guide in silence.
“Do you suppose it is possible that any one else should be here?” said her companion, without replying to her question.
She peered round behind the trees, and, having satisfied herself that there were no listeners, she proceeded in a low voice to tell Caroline that she had at last hit on a plan for paying what they owed to Miss Forester.
“That was what you meant, then, when you called out, ‘I have it!’”
“Certainly it was; and it is a capital idea. I am going to get a bowl and fill it with water and set it on the top of the door of her room, so that, when she opens it, splash—will come all the water over her.”
“But how can you fix it so that it will stay till she comes?”
“Oh, leave the door a little ajar; and Isha’n’t put it there till just before she goes in, when it is a little dark. You know she always retires to her room just before tea, to arrange those beautiful curls of her’s so as to look her prettiest at the supper-table. I’ll save her the trouble of wetting her hair for once.”
“But, Flora, where will you get a bowl?”
“Why, take her own wash-bowl, of course!”
“But in the fall that would be too heavy: it might hurt her badly, or it might break, and cut her.”
“So much the better.”
“No,” said Carrie, steadily: “I don’t object to her getting a little frightened and a good deal wet. She deserves that. But I shan’t go in for any thing that might hurt her.”
“Poh! poh!” exclaimed her accomplice. “There isn’t one chance in a thousand of its hitting her.”
But Carrie was resolute. Florence reflected a few minutes.
“Well, Carrie, how would a tin basin do?That couldn’t hurt her: the more’s the pity!”
“But where can you get one?”
“Oh, buy one: they are cheap.”
“But we cannot go out of the grounds ourselves, you know; and I don’t like to give such a commission to any one else.”
“Well, leave that to me. I will arrange it somehow,” said her friend, as they walked back to the house.
On her return to her room, Carrie found her cousin anxiously waiting for her.
“I know Florence is up to some new mischief,” said she. “Don’t let her get you into any fresh difficulty. If she has contrived some new scheme, let her carry it out alone. Don’t you have any thing to do with it.”
Carrie hesitated.
“She is a very bad and dangerous girl,” continued Susie; “and I can see that she influences you more and more every day.”
Well meant as this was, Susan could not have said any thing more injudicious. Carrieflamed up in defence of her friend in an instant.
“She is not so bad as you make her out to be; and, as to influence, Florence says (and she ought to know) that I have a great deal over her.”
“All I can say,” replied her cousin, “is that I judge of a person’s influence by the effect it produces. The reason why I think Florence influences you more than you do her, is because I see that you are changed very much, and I don’t see that she is, one particle. You are in great danger, Carrie. Perhaps this is a turning-point with you. I tremble for you!”
“You are not my judge, thank goodness! If you were, I should tremble for myself.”
“Oh, Carrie!” exclaimed Susie;—but she had left the room.
“I think perhaps we had better let Miss Forester go,” said Carrie to Florence; for, though she would not confess it, Susan’s words had influenced her somewhat.
“Nonsense!” retorted her friend. “Whatharm will a little ducking do her? I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Have you got the basin yet?”
“No; but, if worse comes to worst, there’s the bowl.”
“No. I insist on it,thatshall not be used. I will have nothing to do with it if it is.”
“Well, well,” said Florence. “But it is next to impossible to procure the tin. I can’t get out myself; and I don’t like to trust any one to buy it.”
Carrie secretly hoped that this difficulty would upset the whole scheme; but she did not know her friend.
A few days later, Florence drew her into their room, and, removing a pillow from the bed, displayed a tin basin under it, which she flourished before her eyes.
“All ready now!” she cried, triumphantly.
“But how did you get it? Did you trust a servant with our secret?” asked Carrie, anxiously.
“Not I. I borrowed this, without leave,from the pantry. All I wonder is that I didn’t think of doing it before.”
“Nobody knows you have the basin, then?”
“Nobody but Susan. She came in just in season to see me hide it. I was clumsy; and nothing, you know, ever escapes her eyes. She asked me what I was going to do with it, and I told her she would find out before long. I am sorry she saw it; but then I guess she won’t betray us.”
That evening, as if for Florence’s especial benefit, Miss Forester was detained at the school-room, after the session, long enough to allow her to arrange the basin of water just as she wished it. When all was ready, she whispered to Carrie,—
“Just before tea, look out for Miss Forester’s shower-bath.”
It was quite dark. The tea-bell was rung. The girls were sitting in expectation close by their own half-opened door. There was a quick step on the staircase.
“Now!” whispered Florence, breathlessly.
There was a splash, a heavy fall, a groan, and then, for a second, all was still,—but only for a second. Suddenly there was a great stir in the hall, and the frightened girls heard exclamations of, “She has fallen down-stairs! She is half killed!”
Hardly daring to move, they clung to each other in silence. Just then Susan rushed in.
“Oh, girls,” she said, reproachfully, “what have you done? Miss Winthrop is dreadfully hurt!”
“Miss Winthrop!” exclaimed both, in dismay.
“Yes. She was going into Miss Forester’s room, and when she opened the door, down came a basin of water. She started back, her foot slipped, and she fell down-stairs. They took her up senseless.”
Her listeners wrung their hands in anguish.
“Oh! If we have killed her!” said Carrie, aside.
Florence paced up and down the room almost beside herself. It had never enteredinto her calculations that any one but Miss Forester could be the sufferer from her trick.
That Miss Winthrop, who was a general favourite and whom she herself dearly loved, should have received the bath intended for Miss Forester would have been bad enough; but to have been the means of injuring her, perhaps fatally, was almost too much to bear.
The injury, however, proved to be of a less serious character than was at first supposed.
Miss Forester’s room was situated at the head of a flight of stairs; and when Miss Winthrop’s foot slipped, as she started back from the sudden fall of water, she had wrenched her ankle. Fainting from the pain, she had fallen down the stairs; but, though she had received numerous bruises, she was not seriously injured. Her sprained ankle would, however, confine her to her room for some time.