The Girls at Mount Morris by Amanda Minnie Douglas (ebook reader for manga .TXT) 📕

having a lovely sleep."

"Do not say anything to her, and the girls will be going away before there is any real fright. I do not anticipate any danger with us. Be comforted. We shall hear all tomorrow."

Lilian was almost happy. She had not lost her dear friend. Under any other circumstances Lilian would have given Mrs. Barrington an unreasoning adoration. She could not define it to herself. She liked Miss Arran, but this was beyond a mere kindly liking.

"She believes in me, she believes in me," and the girl poured the fragrant balm on her wounded heart. But there seemed an awful undefined fear.


CHAPTER VII

A SUPREME MOMENT

The girls in the study were looking furtively at one another. Was this a sort of surprise to be sprung upon them?

"Oh, Miss Marsh, do you know what this means? I can't make beginning or middle out of it. Why doesn't Miss Boyd come?"

"Yes, where is airy fairy Lilian? I think some other life she must have been a soundless ghost. You look up and she is there. Then she disappears."

"I'm glad some of the girls will have to stay through vacation," said Alice Nevins. "It will be awful poky, I wish I could go to New York and the theatre every night."

"Every other night would do for me," said Phillipa, "and here I've two French exercises to go over. One has five errors--blunders, and the other three. Madame Eustice wants to go at twelve tomorrow. Miss Vincent do take pity on me when you go to Paris. I've heard it said you can't talk it until you've studied it all over again. Oh, what's the use of so much weariness of heart and brain!"

No one came. Then in girl fashion they stirred up a sort of gale, saying funny things and making droll misquotations, or putting the wrong name to others and wondering what would be in the Christmas stockings.

"I must leave a pack behind to be darned up. I hope I'll get two boxes of new ones. Girls, you wouldn't dare offer your old ones to Miss Boyd, would you? I have some pretty ones and those plaited silk. They wear better than real silk. Mother thinks they're good enough for school."

"I don't suppose Miss Boyd has any relatives. It would be rather tough not to have _any_ gifts. Girls, oughtn't we chip in--"

"No, we ought not," replied Phil, decisively. "The maid and the laundress are the only ones I remember at Christmas. Mrs. Barrington has sensibly forbidden the giving of tips, and since we don't pretend to be friends it would be a bad precedent."

"Miss Boyd is an excellent scholar," said Miss Vincent.

"If she couldn't learn something higher she might as well stay on the lower rounds," sneered some one. "They relegate these things better in England. A housemaid's daughter is generally a housemaid."

"I think I have heard of people coming up from the ranks in favored England," was the dry rejoinder.

"Oh, let's let her alone. She'll make her way with that high head of hers. Perhaps she will be President of some college yet."

Then they went back to fun. At nine Miss Arran came in and dismissed them.

Zay was thinking how solitary the girl must be. Oh, if her mother were not the general mender! Even if she were a sort of charity scholar! And she was going to have such a splendid Christmas. Her dear, beloved mother able to get about by herself, and all the rest of their lives to be such friends, to go abroad together, to visit picture galleries, points of interest and compare notes. For Mrs. Crawford had been finely educated and even the prospect of being an invalid for life had not made her relax her hold on intellectuality. She had been a delightful friend to her boys and they were proud enough of her, but Zay would always be her supreme darling.

* * * * *


Some of the last exercises and conditions were marked off the next day. Madame Eustice and two of the girls went home. A box came for Miss Nevins and the girls thronged around at her invitation while Nat drew out the nails that had fastened it securely, and lifted out a lighter box.

"That's from Madame I know, and I have frocks enough here for winter. Oh, that's a splendid fruit cake, and nuts and that's candied orange and a box of fruit, and this is some sort of jewelry."

She tore off the wrapping eagerly. A long _lapis lazuli_ chain with a beautiful pendant and links of exquisite color, and a pair of bracelets to match.

"It's elegant," pronounced Phillipa. "I never go crazy over it myself and it seems too old for a girl; the sort of thing for a dowager to wear on state occasions. Now, let us see the frock."

A beautiful, fine albatross cloth in itself appropriate, but betrimmed with pipings of satin and lace.

"Why it looks like a wedding gown. You'll have to save it for there will be no occasion to wear it here. Not even graduation and the lawn fete, for then we all wear simple white muslin. That is Mrs. Barrington's law."

"Oh, dear, and it is so beautiful!" on a half cry. "You see, mamma thought being a high-up school there would be parties and all that. Last winter in New York I went to three and oh, you should have seen the dresses! I had one of blue gauze over thin satin and it was just lovely, and the dancing was simply great, and here you never go any where."

"We come here to improve our minds," said some one sententiously

"I'd like some real fun and gayety, and think that I must stay all alone here."

"There will be five girls to keep you company."

"But there's no fun or parties or anything. Oh, let's cut the cake. I shan't enjoy it when I am alone."

It was a real treat, and the nuts and sweets were a feast. They had not much appetite for luncheon.

"But did you ever see anything so idiotic as that lovely frock for such a girl and a place like this where you do not go to high-up parties," said one of the girls in a group, afterward. "And what it must have cost! It really ought to be returned as very unsuitable."

"What can the mother be like, and isn't the father a politician or a contractor?" with a laugh.

"No," returned Phillipa. "I asked father to find out about them. Mr. Nevins is a reputable banker, a very good judge of loans and is rated quite highly in London. Then he buys curios and pictures, so he must have some taste. Think what that silly girl will have, enough to make any three girls of us fancy ourselves heroines of the Arabian Nights; but the mother can't have any sense."

"I think the modistes are largely to blame. No doubt the mother ordered a handsome evening dress, and the woman made it handsome and expensive and quite useless. You don't see Zay Crawford with any such things!"

"Zay is beauty unadorned."

"And Miss Nevins is ugliness intensified. I am really sorry for her, though she has improved a very little. But when you think of the place she might take in society--"

"And the journeys!"

"Still, I wouldn't want such a mother."

Phillipa went to her room to finish her Latin verses.

"Though why you should be compelled to write Latin verses when you can't make decent English rhymes I don't see," she grumbled.

She was almost through when the door flew open and shut again with a bang and Louie Howe threw herself on the floor clasping Phillipa's knees, her eyes distraught with terror.

"Oh, isn't it horrible!" she almost shrieked. "Those boys had malignant scarlet fever! That one was dying the girl held up, he was choking awfully, and at nine o'clock the other one died. It's all in the morning's paper. I think they hid it away. Miss Vincent picked it up in the library. Oh, what can we do?"

"You can stop screaming and get up." Phillipa fairly dragged her up and shook her violently. "Hush! hush!" she commanded. "You'll have the whole faculty in here, and we'll be bundled out bag and baggage. Have a little regard for Zay and me if you have none for yourself."

Phillipa drew up the willow rocker and pushed Louie in it. "Don't have hysterics if that is what you're aiming at or I'll douse you with cold water until you're half drowned."

Louie was sobbing now. "I can't help it, and think of the dreadful risk we ran! That woman ought to be sent to prison."

"That woman was going on with her business, earning her living. We were the fools! How did they know it was scarlet fever?"

"Well, she thought it was measles and was doctoring them, but one of them grew so much worse she sent for Dr. Lewis and he was so busy he didn't get there until five, just as the boy died, and the other one hadn't seemed so bad, but he died at nine, and the youngest girl has the fever. Dr. Lewis sent for the undertaker right away and they put something on the bodies and sealed up the coffin and they were to be buried this morning and the clothes to be burned and the house fumigated. Oh, isn't it horrible! The woman ought to go to prison."

"After losing her two children?"

"Well, to give us all scarlet fever, malignant scarlet fever?" with emphasis.

Phillipa was quivering in every nerve. But she _must_ control Louie.

"Well, we shouldn't have gone there. I think she ought not have let us in but just said she couldn't admit customers. Now, what are you going to do?"

"I--I--what _can_ I do? I s'pose I'll have scarlet fever--"

"You can give the thing away and be sent home in disgrace. You'll lose your watch and perhaps not get in another school. You can spoil Zay Crawford's life for the present, just when it has reached the loveliest point of all--"

"And you?"

Louie stopped sobbing and studied her companion in wonder.

"I'm not going to have scarlet fever. Those children haven't been sick a week. Scarlet fever is taken from the little flakes that peel off when the skin begins to dry up. We surely didn't get any of those. We went right out in the fresh air and I breathed in a big supply, the room had been so close. Two of mother's children had scarlet fever and she took care of them. None of the others had it. It's half fright; just pull yourself together and don't be an idiot and you'll come through all right."

"Oh, Phil! I wish I had your courage."

"You have courage enough only you won't use it. Just feel certain nothing is going to happen and you'll come out all right. We're going home so soon that for our sakes you might summon a little courage. If you go on this way Louie you'll be--what is it they call hysterical people? Neurasthenics, I believe. I