“You want to tempt me again,” said Priscilla, “I won’t go with you.”
“You needn’t,” said Annie with emphasis. “I have only this to say. Your prize paper is finished?”
“Yes.”
“I will come to your room for it very, very early to-morrow morning.”
“You know, Annie, you daren’t come to my room.”
“I dare, and will,” said Annie. “I will be with you at five o’clock, before any of the servants are up. At that hour we will safely transact a very important little piece of business.”
“You mean,” said Priscilla, raising her haggard face and looking with her dark-grey eyes full at the girl, “that you want me to go down for ever in my own estimation, and to proclaim to my good teachers, to dear Mrs Lyttelton, and to all the girls here that I am not myself at all. You want me to read an essay written by one of the stupidest girls in the school as my own, and you want her to read mine – which may probably be the best of those written – and you want her to win the prize which ought to be mine.”
“Yes, I do want her to win the prize,” said Annie, “and for that reason I want her to read your essay as though it were her own.”
“You forget one thing,” said Priscilla. “Mabel writes so atrociously that no one will believe for a single moment that my paper could be her work; and, on the other hand, people will be as little likely to go down in their high estimation of my talent as to suppose that I have seriously written the twaddle which she will give me. You see yourself, Annie, the danger of your scheme. It is unworkable; our teachers are all a great deal too clever to be taken in by it. It cannot possibly be carried out.”
“It can, and will,” said Annie. “I have thought of all that, and am preparing the way. In the first place, the paper you will read will be by no means bad. It will be the sort of paper that will pass muster, and long before prize day there will be an undercurrent of belief in the school that Mabel is by no means the dunce she is credited to be.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You had best not know, Priscilla. The main thing for you to consider is this: You do not go to your horrid uncle Josiah. You spend your summer holidays with him, I know; but you return here afterwards. You have another happy year at Lyttelton School, and at the end of that time you win a splendid scholarship for Newnham or Girton, and go to Cambridge for three happy years. Think of it, Priscilla; and you can do it so easily. Do think of it, darling Pris. You are either a household drudge or a country dressmaker if you don’t do this thing; and if you do – and it’s really such a very little thing – you may be anything you like.”
Priscilla sat very still while Annie was talking to her, but in each of her cheeks there rose a brilliant spot of colour. It spread and spread until the whole young face looked transformed, the eyes brighter and darker than before, the lips quivering with suppressed excitement. The girl’s figure became suddenly tense. She stood up; she caught Annie’s hands between her own.
“Oh, how you tempt me!” she said. “How you tempt me! I did not know I could be so wicked as to listen to you; but I am tempted – tempted!”
“Of course you are, darling. Who would not be who was in your shoes? Isn’t it the law of life to do the very best for one’s self?”
“Oh, but it isn’t the right law!” gasped poor Priscilla.
“Well, right or wrong,” answered Annie, “it is the wisest law.”
“But even – even if I did it,” said Priscilla, “how is the money to be got?”
“You leave that to us,” said Annie. “Your term’s fees will be paid, and there will be something over. Leave all that to us.”
“Go away now,” said Priscilla; “don’t talk to me any more at all; I must have time to think. Oh! I don’t want to do wrong. I must pray to God to help me not to yield to you.”
“You will not do that,” said Annie, “for your own heart, and every argument in your mind, are inclining you in the other direction. I leave you now, for I feel certain of you; but Mabel and I will visit you to-morrow morning at five o’clock.”
“You can’t come in, for the door will be locked.”
“You know,” said Annie, staggered for a moment, “that it is against the rules for any girl to lock her door at night.”
“It will be a much lesser transgression on my part to lock my room door than to allow you and Mabel in,” answered Priscilla.
“Well, we will come on the chance,” replied Annie. “Ta-ta for a time, Pris. Oh, what a jolly year you will have, and how hard you will work! How I shall rejoice to see it! – for, whatever you must think of me, I at least am not selfish. I lose my dear friend Mabel by this scheme, and I keep you, who have never yet been my very special friend; but you will be when we return together to Lyttelton School next autumn. Good-bye, till to-morrow morning.”
Annie tripped from the room.
Chapter Five
Annie’s Scheme
There are at all schools girls of different degrees of talent. There are the brilliant girls, the idle girls, the plodding girls. Now Annie belonged to the middle class. She knew how essential it was for her to work hard unless she were to accept a fate which she considered too horrible to contemplate – namely, that of companion to kind Uncle Maurice in the country rectory. Her hope was to do so well at school that she might, when she left, induce her uncle to send her for at least a year to Paris in order to put what might be called the final polish on her education. Then, if her present plans went well, she might go into society with the aid of Mabel Lushington, who of course would be from henceforth in her power.
Now Annie had a fairly good gift for writing, and this gift on the present occasion she put absolutely at the disposal of her friend. Poor Mabel, excited by the scheme which Annie had proposed, trembling with fear that it might be found out, could not have written a single line of coherent English were it not for Annie’s clearer and cleverer brain.
As they sat for hours together in the summer-house, Annie’s thoughts really filled Mabel’s manuscript.
“I will dictate to you, and you will put down exactly what I say,” remarked Annie. “Now then, fire away. Idealism. You must get a sort of epitome of what your thoughts are on the subject.”
“I have not any,” said Mabel. “I can’t give an epitome of what I know nothing about.”
“Oh, come, Mabel; you are a goose! Here, let me dictate.”
She began. Her sentences had little depth in them, but they were at least expressed in fairly good English, and would have passed muster in a crowd. After a long time the task was completed, and an essay was produced – an essay, compared to the one which poor Mabel had already written, almost fine in its construction. Annie, as she read it over, was in raptures with it.
“I only trust it is not too good,” she said. “Don’t you think it sounds very nice when I read it aloud, Mabel?”
“I suppose it does,” answered Mabel. “I have got a horrid headache; I hate sitting up all night.”
“You will have to sacrifice something to your year’s bliss,” replied Annie. “Now then, May, that is done. I have given you a paper. At five o’clock we will both go into Priscie’s room. When there, a little transaction will very briefly take place. You will have to promise Pris that you will pay her school fees for another year – namely, for three whole terms; and she, in return for this kindness, will sign this essay as her own, and will hand it in as her essay during the course of the morning. Miss Phillips will lock it up, and it will lie perdu until the great prize day. Pris meantime will have given you a really good paper, which you will sign and give in as your own. Thus your victory will be accomplished, and you need dread nothing further.”
“But,”