Early in the morning Miss Jane appeared in Quaker Row with some slips of paper in her hand, one of which she left at each door. They told the hours at which the girls were to go to the bath-house.
“You will carry, each, a crash towel, a sponge, and soap,” she announced to Katy, “and will be in the entry, at the foot of the stairs, at twenty-five minutes after nine precisely. Failures in punctuality will be punished by a mark.” Miss Jane always delivered her words like a machine, and closed her mouth with a snap at the end of the sentence.
“Horrid thing! Don’t I wish her missionary would come and carry her off. Not that I blame him for staying away,” remarked Rose Red, from her door; making a face at Miss Jane, as she walked down the entry.
“I don’t understand about the bath-house,” said Katy. “Does it belong to us? And where is it?”
“No, it doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to Mr. Perrit, and anybody can use it; only on Saturday it is reserved for us nuns. Haven’t you every noticed it when we have been out walking? It’s in that street by the bakery, which we pass to take the Lebanon road. We go across the green, and down by Professor Seccomb’s, and we are in plain sight from the college all the way; and, of course, those abominable boys sit there with spy-glasses, and stare as hard as ever they can. It’s perfectly horrid. ‘A crash towel, a sponge, and soap,’ indeed! I wish I could make Miss Jane eat the pieces of soap which she has forced me to carry across this village.”
“O Rose!” remonstrated Mary Silver.
“Well, I do. And the crash towels afterward, by way of a dessert,” replied the incorrigible Rose. “Never mind! Just wait! A bright idea strikes me!”
“Oh! what?” cried the other three; but Rose only pursed up her mouth, arched he eye-brows, and vanished into her own room, locking the door behind her. Mary Silver, finding herself shut out, sat down meekly in the hall till such time as it should please Rose to open the door. This was not till the bath hour. As Katy and Clover went by, Rose put her head out, and called that she would be down in a minute.
The bathing party consisted of eight girls, with Miss Jane for escort. They were half way across the common before Miss Jane noticed that everybody was shaking with stifled laughter, except Rose, who walked along demurely, apparently unconscious that there was any thing to laugh at. Miss Jane looked sharply from one to another for a moment, then stopped short and exclaimed, “Rosamond Redding! how dare you?”
“What is it ma’am?” asked Rose, with the face of a lamb.
“Your bath towel! your sponge!” gasped Miss Jane.
“Yes, ma’am, I have them all,” replied the audacious Rose, putting her hand to her hat. There, to be sure, was the long crash towel, hanging down behind like a veil, while the sponge was fastened on one side like a great cockade; and in front appeared a cake of pink soap, neatly pinned into the middle of a black velvet bow.
Miss Jane seized Rose, and removed these ornaments in a twinkling. “We shall see what Mrs. Florence thinks of this conduct,” she grimly remarked. Then, dropping the soap and sponge in her own pocket, she made Rose walk beside her, as if she were a criminal in custody.
The bath-house was a neat place, with eight small rooms, well supplied with hot and cold water. Katy would have found her bath very nice, had it not been for the thought of the walk home. They must look so absurd, she reflected, with their sponges and damp towels.
Miss Jane was as good as her word. After dinner, Rose was sent for by Mrs. Florence, and had an interview of two hours with her: she came out with red eyes, and shut herself into her room with a disconsolate bang. Before long, however, she revived sufficiently to tap on the drawers and push through a note with the following words:—
“My heart is broken!
“R.R.”
Clover hastened in to comfort her. Rose was sitting on the floor, with a very clean pocket-handkerchief in her hand. She wept, and put her head against Clover’s knee.
“I suppose I’m the nastiest girl in the world,” she said. “Mrs.
Florence thinks so. She said I was an evil influence in the school.
Wasn’t that un—kind?” with a little sob.
“I meant to be so good this term,” she went on; “but what’s the use?
A codfish might as well try to play the piano! It was always so, even
when I was a baby. Sylvia says I have got a little fiend inside of me.
Do you believe I have? Is it that makes me so horrid?”
Clover purred over her. She could not bear to have Rose feel badly. “Wasn’t Miss Jane funny?” went on Rose, with a sudden twinkle; “and did you see Berry, and Alfred Seccomb?”
“No: where were they?”
“Close to us, standing by the fence. All the time Miss Jane was unpinning the towel, they were splitting their sides, and Berry made such a face at me that I nearly laughed out. That boy has a perfect genius for faces. He used to frighten Sylvia and me into fits, when we were little tots, up here on visits.”
“Then you knew him before you came to school?”
“Oh dear, yes! I know all the Hillsover boys. We used to make mud pies together. They’re grown up now, most of ‘em, and in college; and when we meet, we’re very dignified, and say, ‘Miss Redding,’ and ‘Mr. Seccomb,’ and ‘Mr. Searles;’ but we’re just as good friends as ever. When I go to take tea with Mrs. Seccomb, Alfred always invites Berry to drop in, and we have the greatest fun. Mrs. Florence won’t let me go this term, though, I guess, she’s so mad about the towel.”
Katy was quite relieved when Clover reported this conversation. Rose, for all her wickedness, seemed to be a little lady. Katy did not like to class her among the girls who flirted with students whom they did not know.
It was wonderful how soon they all settled down, and became accustomed to their new life. Before six weeks were over, Katy and Clover felt as if they had lived at Hillsover for years. This was partly because there was so much to do. Nothing makes time fly like having every moment filled, and every hour set apart for a distinct employment.
They made several friends, chief among whom were Ellen Gray and Louisa Agnew. This last intimacy Lilly resented highly, and seemed to consider as an affront to herself. With no one, however, was Katy so intimate as Clover was with Rose Red. This cost Katy some jealous pangs at first. She was so used to considering Clover her own exclusive property that it was not easy to share her with another; and she had occasional fits of feeling resentful, and injured, and left out. These were but momentary, however. Katy was too healthy of mind to let unkind feelings grow, and by and by she grew fond of Rose and Rose of her, so that in the end the sisters share their friend as they did other nice things, and neither of them was jealous of the other.
But, charming as she was, a certain price had to be paid for the pleasure of intimacy with Rose. Her overflowing spirits, and “the little fiend inside her,” were always provoking scrapes, in which her friends were apt to be more or less involved. She was very pen intent and afflicted after these scrapes; but it didn’t make a bit of difference: the next time she was just as naughty as ever.
“What are you?” said Katy, one day, meeting her in the hall with a heap of black shawls and aprons on her arm.
“Hush!” whispered Rose, mysteriously, “don’t say a word. Senator Brown is dead—our senator, you know. I’m going to put my window into mourning for him, that’s all. It’s a proper token of respect.”
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