"'Right,' said I; 'and question him about two or three, which you name yourself; that will finish the business.'
"'I don't know none.'
"'Don't you? Then I will write off a short list. Keep the paper in your hand; and when he is fairly under way talking, you steal a sly peep at it.' Oh! it was enrapturing to see how she held on to that slip of paper! poring over it every five minutes before Mr. Dermott's arrival, and once in two minutes afterwards. She would study it for a second, then her lips would move, until the time for another peep; she was getting it by heart, staring at him all the while. By and by he happened to be near her; and said something about the Panorama. She had been on tiptoe for the last hour, lest her trouble should be thrown away; and resolved not to lose this opportunity, she spoke out as loudly as addressing a deaf person—
"'Mr. Dermarck! have you ever read Plutarch-es Liv-es, Homer's Eyelids, Dance's Diving Comedy and Campbell's Gratitude of Wimming?' I wish you could have seen him!"
"O Ellen! Ellen!" chorussed twenty voices; and the crowd rocked in uncontrollable merriment. Carry, and one or two more were grave; and an indignant voice said, "How wickedly heartless!"
There was no mistaking the meaning and emphasis of the interjection. Ellen crimsoned to the roots of her hair. She retorted with a spirit entirely opposite to her usual sportive gaiety.
"One, whose lowest thoughts soar so far above the common herd, as Miss Ross, cannot be expected to understand a piece of harmless pleasantry."
Ida had unluckily employed the oft-quoted words, "the common herd of mankind," in a written composition; and this was not the first time it had been used as an offensive missile.
"One must stoop low indeed, Miss Morris," was the instant rejoinder, "to see harmless pleasantry in a plot for the disgrace of an unoffending school-mate."
"Ida! Ellen!" exclaimed Carry, laying her hand upon Ellen's mouth, and stifling her reply. "For my sake, girls—if not for your own—say no more! Ida! what have you to do with this miserable affair?"
"I have done!" said Ida, bitterly; "Defence of right and truth is better left unattempted here!"
The girls fell back as she crossed to her seat. The sentence sank into every mind; and the expression of each one showed that she appropriated it. Carry's head dropped upon Ellen's shoulder; and sullenly vindictive as was the latter, she was not unmoved by the quiver of the slender frame. Mr. Purcell's entrance put an end to the scene. That was a wretched day to more than one heart. Ida's was well-nigh bursting. It mattered not that her prospects of popularity were, for the present, shipwrecked; that her resolutions of patience and gentleness had broken, like dry straws, at the breeze of passion;—Carry was wounded—perhaps offended—perhaps estranged! "Still, what have I done?" whispered pride, "spoken truth, and defended the absent!" But conscience answered—"Anger, not justice was the prompter," and again, every feeling merged in one—"What will Carry think?" She did not offer her book as usual—did not meet her eye. She would have read no resentment there; the pale, sad face told of suffering, with no admixture of baser motives. The intermission was dull. Miss Celestia's extravagant description of "the party," and "the gentlemen" she "was interduced to," hardly excited a smile. A nameless depression was upon all. Ellen, their ringleader in mischief, and Carry, the willing participant in their innocent pleasures, were wanting from their band. They remained at their desks, seemingly engaged in study, until almost school-time, when Carry went around to the other, whispered a word; and they left the apartment together. They returned arm in arm, as Ida, who had gone home in recess, more to be quieted and refreshed by the cool air, than for luncheon—entered from the street. She remarked their affectionate air, and happier faces with goading envy. "Ellen is worth conciliating. It would be dangerous to break with her. There can be no hesitancy, with the fair words of the crowd in one scale—and Ida Ross, unknown and unbeloved, in the other. Be it so!" But awakened affection had had a taste of its proper nutriment, and was not to be famished into silence. The afternoon wore heavily away in the unspoken anguish of love and pride and suspicion. Careless of remarks or conjectures, she declined dinner, and retired at once to her chamber, when she reached home. It might have been one hour;—it might have been three, that she had knelt or laid upon the floor, her head upon a stool, before the mourner for the dead bird;—weeping and thinking, and seeming to grow a year older with each flood of grief; when there came a tap at the door. "Josephine!" was the first thought—to spring to the mirror, brush the tumbled hair, and dash rosewater over the discolored cheeks, the work of the next minute; then she said sleepily—"Who is there?"
"It is I—Carry!"
The bolt was withdrawn, and the intruder lay, sobbing upon her breast.
"Oh, Ida! how could you be angry with me?"
Ida struggled with the answering drops, but they would come.
"I thought you had thrown me off, Carry!"
"You could not—after my note."
"Your note!"
"I slipped it into your French Grammar, as it lay open before your eyes; and you shut the book and put it aside—I supposed to read it at your leisure."
"I did not see it."
She went to her satchel, and brought forth the Grammar. "There it is!" said Carry, as a folded paper fell from within it. "Do not read it. I will tell you its contents. I asked your forgiveness for interrupting you so rudely this morning; but these public disputes lead to so much evil. Ellen was wrong; she has said so to me; and is ready to be your friend, if you consent. Her conduct was blameably thoughtless; and her quick temper could not submit to a rebuke so openly administered. I was abrupt, but it was not because I was angry with, or did not love you. Ellen's taunt was extremely provoking"—
"Stop! stop! Carry! It is I, who should sue for pardon, and excuse, if I can, my unbecoming heat, and after doubts of your friendship. I cannot tell you what a fearful warfare has waged within me;—how much incensed I was to see you and Ellen come in so lovingly, at noon;—how Ishmael-like I felt;—every man's hand against me, and mine against the universe, and Him who made it," she added, with an intonation of awe. "Can you love me after hearing this, Carry?"
"Always—always!"
Ellen was amazed, that afternoon, on being summoned to receive visitors, to find in them her two class-mates, and more astounded to hear from her antagonist of the morning, a frank and graceful apology for her hasty strictures upon her conduct and words. Ellen was, as she phrased it, "great upon high-flown speeches; but this was an extraordinary occasion, and demanded a deviation from ordinary rules; so I condescended, for once, to make use of simple language."
If simple, it was satisfactory, and they parted most amicably. It was past sunset, when the friends arrived at Mr. Read's door. Ida stood upon the steps, watching Carry, as she tripped away into the dusk. Others would have seen only a pretty girl, with a smile like May sunshine;—to the fond eyes that followed her, she was an angel of love, upon whom nothing of evil could gaze without adoration and contrition;—and now the light of a new blessing beaming upon her brow—the blessing of the peace-maker!
CHAPTER VII.
Spring had departed, and the good citizens of Richmond complained as piteously of the heat, as though every zephyr that awoke for miles around, did not sweep over their seven hills freighted with the perfume of gardens and groves, instead of the reeking odors of a thronged city. And in our day, as then, airy, spacious villas are forsaken, while their infatuated denizens hie away to pay $50 per week, for a genteel sty, six feet by ten; with the privilege of eating such fare, as in the event of its appearance upon their own boards, would find its way back to the place where it was concocted, accompanied by an anathematised warning to the cook;—and of gulping down unwholesomely-copious