FullReads

Such were the varying humors of the night. After the episode of the dog, feeling a little chilly, Arthur enveloped himself in the tattered old overcoat and must have dropped into a nap. Suddenly he awoke. Within ten feet of him, just in the act of stooping over a huge melon, was a woman’s figure. He saw the face clearly as she rose. Immortal gods! it was–But I am anticipating.

The discipline at Westville Seminary had been shockingly lax since the long illness of the principal had left the easy-going first assistant teacher at the head of affairs. The girls ran all over the rules,–had private theatricals, suppers, and games of all sorts in their rooms at all hours of day or night. In the course of the evening whose events in another sphere of life have been narrated, several girls called at Lina Maynard’s room to notify her of the “spread” at Nell Barber’s, No. 49, at eleven o’clock. They found her sitting in a low rocking-chair, with an open letter in her hand and a very pensive, discontented expression of countenance.

“Does he press for an answer, Lina? We ‘re just in time to advise you,” cried Nell Barber.

“Don’t say Yes unless his eyes are blue,” drawled a brunette.

“Unless they ‘re black, you mean,” sharply amended a bright blonde.

“Make him elope with you,” suggested Nell, “It will be such fun to have a real rope-ladder elopement at the Seminary, and we’ll all sit up and see it.”

“Oh, do, do, Lina!” chorused the others.

But Lina, apparently too much chagrined at something to be in a mood for jests, sat with her eyebrows petulantly contracted, her feet thrust out, and the hand holding the letter hanging by her side, her whole attitude indicating despondence.

“Still pensive! It can’t be he’s faithless!” exclaimed Nell.

“Faithless to those eyes! I should say not,” cried the blonde, whom Lina called her sweetheart, and who claimed to be “engaged” to her according to boarding-school fashion.

“Don’t mind him, dear,” she went on, throwing herself on the floor, clasping her hands about Lina’s knee, and leaning her cheek on it. “You make me so jealous. Have n’t you got me, and ain’t I enough?”

“Plenty enough, dear,” said Lina, stroking her cheek. “This is only from my brother Charley.”

“The one at Watertown ‘Sem.’?”

“Yes,” said Lina; “and oh, girls,” she went on, with gloomy energy, “we don’t have any good times at all compared with those boys. They do really wicked things, hook apples, and carry off people’s gates and signs, and screw up tutors’ doors in the night, and have fights with what he calls ‘townies,’–I don’t know exactly what they are,–and everything. I thought before that we were doing some things too, but we ‘re not, compared with all that, and I shall be so ashamed when I meet him at home not to have anything to tell except little bits of things.”

A depressing pause followed. Lina’s disparaging view of achievements in the way of defying the proprieties, of which all the girls had been very proud, cast a profound gloom over the circle. The blonde seemed to voice the common sentiment when she said, resting her chin on Lina’s knee, and gazing pensively at the wall:–

“Oh, dear! that comes of being girls. We might as well be good and done with it. We can’t be bad so as to amount to anything.”

“Good or bad, we must eat,” said Nell Barber. “I must go and get the spread ready. I forgot all about it, Lina; but we came in just to invite you. Eleven sharp, remember. Three knocks, a pause, and another, you know. Come, girls.”

The brunette followed her, but Lina’s little sweetheart remained.

“What have they got?” demanded the former listlessly.

“Oh, Nell has a jar of preserves from home, and I smuggled up a plate of dried beef from tea, and cook let us have some crackers and plates. We tried hard to get a watermelon there was in the pantry, but cook said she did n’t dare let us have it. It’s for dinner to-morrow.”