One evening Mrs. Miller, seated with Miss Wilson in the study, correcting examination papers, heard in the distance a cry like that of a cat in distress. She ran to the door and listened. Presently there arose a prolonged wail, slurring up through two octaves, and subsiding again. It was a true feline screech, impossible to localize; but it was interrupted by a sob, a snarl, a fierce spitting, and a scuffling, coming unmistakably from a room on the floor beneath, in which, at that hour, the older girls assembled for study.
“My poor Gracchy!” exclaimed Mrs. Miller, running downstairs as fast as she could. She found the room unusually quiet. Every girl was deep in study except Miss Carpenter, who, pretending to pick up a fallen book, was purple with suppressed laughter and the congestion caused by stooping.
“Where is Miss Ward?” demanded Mrs. Miller.
“Miss Ward has gone for some astronomical diagrams in which we are interested,” said Agatha, looking up gravely. Just then Miss Ward, diagrams in hand, entered.
“Has that cat been in here?” she said, not seeing Mrs. Miller, and speaking in a tone expressive of antipathy to Gracchus.
Agatha started and drew up her ankles, as if fearful of having them bitten. Then, looking apprehensively under the desk, she replied, “There is no cat here, Miss Ward.”
“There is one somewhere; I heard it,” said Miss Ward carelessly, unrolling her diagrams, which she began to explain without further parley. Mrs. Miller, anxious for her pet, hastened to seek it elsewhere. In the hall she met one of the housemaids.
“Susan,” she said, “have you seen Gracchus?”
“He’s asleep on the hearthrug in your room, ma’am. But I heard him crying down here a moment ago. I feel sure that another cat has got in, and that they are fighting.”
Susan smiled compassionately. “Lor’ bless you, ma’am,” she said, “that was Miss Wylie. It’s a sort of play-acting that she goes through. There is the bee on the window-pane, and the soldier up the chimley, and the cat under the dresser. She does them all like life.”
“The soldier in the chimney!” repeated Mrs. Miller, shocked.
“Yes, ma’am. Like as it were a follower that had hid there when he heard the mistress coming.”
Mrs. Miller’s face set determinedly. She returned to the study and related what had just occurred, adding some sarcastic comments on the efficacy of moral force in maintaining collegiate discipline. Miss Wilson looked grave; considered for some time; and at last said: “I must think over this. Would you mind leaving it in my hands for the present?”
Mrs. Miller said that she did not care in whose hands it remained provided her own were washed of it, and resumed her work at the papers. Miss Wilson then, wishing to be alone, went into the empty classroom at the other side of the landing. She took the Fault Book from its shelf and sat down before it. Its record closed with the announcement, in Agatha’s handwriting:
“Miss Wilson has called me impertinent, and has written to my uncle that I have refused to obey the rules. I was not impertinent; and I never refused to obey the rules. So much for Moral Force!”
Miss Wilson rose vigorously, exclaiming: “I will soon let her know whether—” She checked herself, and looked round hastily, superstitiously fancying that Agatha might have stolen into the room unobserved. Reassured that she was alone, she examined her conscience as to whether she had done wrong in calling Agatha impertinent, justifying herself by the reflection that Agatha had, in fact, been impertinent. Yet she recollected that she had refused to admit this plea on a recent occasion when Jane Carpenter had advanced it in extenuation of having called a fellow-student a liar. Had she then been unjust to Jane, or inconsiderate to Agatha?
Her casuistry was interrupted by some one softly whistling a theme from the overture to Masaniello, popular at the college in the form of an arrangement for six pianofortes and twelve hands. There was only one student unladylike and musical enough to whistle; and Miss Wilson was ashamed to find herself growing nervous at the prospect of an encounter with Agatha, who entered whistling sweetly, but with a lugubrious countenance. When she saw in whose presence she stood, she begged pardon politely, and was about to withdraw, when Miss Wilson, summoning all her Judgment and tact, and hoping that they would — contrary to their custom in emergencies — respond to the summons, said:
“Agatha, come here. I want to speak to you.”
Agatha closed her lips, drew in a long breath through her nostrils, and marched to within a few feet of Miss Wilson, where she halted with her hands clasped before her.
“Sit down.”
Agatha sat down with a single movement, like a doll.
“I don’t understand that, Agatha,” said Miss Wilson, pointing to the entry in the Recording Angel. “What does it mean?”
“I am unfairly treated,” said Agatha, with signs of agitation.
“In what way?”
“In every way. I am expected to be something more than mortal. Everyone else is encouraged to complain, and to be weak and silly. But I must have no feeling. I must be always in the right. Everyone else may be homesick, or huffed, or in low spirits. I must have no nerves, and must keep others laughing all day long. Everyone else may sulk when a word of reproach is addressed to them, and may make the professors afraid to find fault with them. I have to bear with the insults of teachers who have less selfcontrol than I, a girl of seventeen! and must coax them out of the difficulties they make for themselves by their own ill temper.”
“But, Agatha—”
“Oh, I know I am talking nonsense, Miss Wilson; but can you expect me to be always sensible — to be infallible?”
“Yes, Agatha; I do not think it is too much to expect you to be always sensible; and—”
“Then you have neither sense nor sympathy yourself,” said Agatha.
There was an awful pause. Neither could have told how long it lasted. Then Agatha, feeling that she must do or say something desperate, or else fly, made a distracted gesture and ran out of the room.
She rejoined her companions in the great hall of the mansion, where they were assembled after study for “recreation,” a noisy process which always set in spontaneously when the professors withdrew. She usually sat with her two favorite associates on a high window seat near the hearth. That place was now occupied by a little girl with flaxen hair, whom Agatha, regardless of moral force, lifted by the shoulders and deposited on the floor. Then she sat down and said:
“Oh, such a piece of news!”
Miss Carpenter opened her eyes eagerly. Gertrude Lindsay affected indifference.
“Someone is going to be expelled,” said Agatha.
“Expelled! Who?”
“You will know soon enough, Jane,” replied Agatha, suddenly grave. “It is someone who made an impudent entry in the Recording Angel.”
Fear stole upon Jane, and she became very red. “Agatha,” she said, “it was you who told me what to write. You know you did, and you can’t deny it.”
“I can’t deny it, can’t I? I am ready to swear that I never dictated a word to you in my life.”
“Gertrude knows you did,” exclaimed Jane, appalled, and almost in tears.
“There,” said Agatha, petting her as if she were a vast baby. “It shall not be expelled, so it shan’t. Have you seen the Recording