“It is just the ‘Little Scholar’ over again,” she said, half aloud, “I can’t see. I don’t know how to act.” She remembered the dream she once had, of a great beautiful Face and a helping hand. “And it was real,” she murmured, “and just as real, and just as near, now as then.”
The result of this long meditation was that, when Clover woke up, she found Katy leaning over, ready to kiss her for good morning, and looking bright and determined.
“Clovy,” she said, “I’ve been thinking; and I’m not going to write to papa about this affair at all!”
“Aren’t you? Why not?” asked Clover, puzzled.
“Because it would worry him, and be of no use. He would come on and take us right away, I’m sure; but Mrs. Florence and all the teachers, and a great many of the girls, would always believe that this horrid, ridiculous story is true. I can’t bear to have them. Let’s stay, instead, and convince them that it isn’t. I think we can.”
“I would a great deal rather go home,” said Clover. “It won’t ever be nice here again. We shall have this dark room, and Miss Jane will be more unkind than ever, and the girls will think you wrote that note, and Lilly Page will say hateful things!” She buttoned her boots with a vindictive air.
“Never mind,” said Katy, trying to feel brave. “I don’t suppose it will be pleasant, but I’m pretty sure it’s right. And Rosy and all the girls we really care for know how it is.”
“I can’t bear it,” sighed Clover, with tears in her eyes. “It is so cruel that they should say such things about you.”
“I mean that they shall say something quite different before we go away,” replied Katy, stroking her hair. “Cousin Helen would tell us to stay, I’m pretty sure. I was thinking about her just now, and I seemed to hear her voice in the air, saying over and over, ‘Live it down! Live it down! Live it down!’” She half sang this, and took two or three dancing steps across the room.
“What a girl you are!” said Clover, consoled by seeing Katy look so bright.
Mrs. Florence was surprised that morning, as she sat in her room, by the appearance of Katy. She looked pale, but perfectly quiet and gentle.
“Mrs. Florence,” she said, “I’ve come to say that I shall not write to my father to take us away, as I told you I should.”
Mrs. Florence bowed stiffly, by way of answer.
“Not,” went on Katy, with a little flash in her eyes, “that he would hesitate, or doubt my word one moment, if I did. But he wished us to stay here a year, and I don’t want to disappoint him. I’d rather stay. And, Mrs. Florence, I’m sorry I was angry, and felt that you were unjust.”
“And to-day you own that I was not?”
“Oh, no!” replied Katy, “I can’t do that. You were unjust, because neither Clover nor I wrote that note. We wouldn’t do such a horrid thing for the world, and I hope some day you will believe us. But I oughtn’t to have spoken so.”
Katy’s face and voice were so truthful as she said this, that Mrs.
Florence was almost shaken in her opinion.
“We will say no more about the matter,” she remarked, in a kinder tone. “If your conduct is perfectly correct in future, it will go far to make this forgotten.”
Few things are more aggravating than to be forgiven when one has done no wrong. Katy felt this as she walked away from Mrs. Florence’s room. But she would not let herself grow angry again. “Live it down!” she whispered, as she went into the school-room.
She and Clover had a good deal to endure for the next two or three weeks. They missed their old room with its sunny window and pleasant outlook. They missed Rose, who, down at the far end of Quaker Row, could not drop in half so often as had been her custom. Miss Jane was specially grim and sharp; and some of the upstairs girls, who resented Katy’s plain speaking, and the formation of a society against flirting, improved the chance to be provoking. Lilly Page was one of these. She didn’t really believe Katy guilty, but she liked to tease her by pretending to believe it.
“Only to think of the President of the Saintly Stuck-Up Society being caught like this!” she remarked, maliciously. “What are our great reformers coming to? Now if it had been a sinner like me, no one would be surprised!”
All this naturally was vexatious. Even sunny Clover shed many tears in private over her mortifications. But the girls bore their trouble bravely, and never said one syllable about the matter in the letters home. There were consolations, too, mixed with the annoyances. Rose Red clung to her two friends closely, and loyally fought their battles. The S. S. U. C. to a girl rallied round its chief. After that sad Saturday the meetings were resumed with as much spirit as ever. Katy’s steadiness and uniform politeness and sweet temper impressed even those who would have been glad to believe a tale against her, and in short time the affair ceased to be a subject for discussion,— was almost forgotten, in fact, except for a sore spot in Katy’s heart, and one page in Rose Red’s album, upon which, under the date of that fatal day, were written these words, headed by an appalling skull and cross-bones in pen-and-ink:—
“N. B.—Pay Miss Jane off.”
Chapter VIII.
Changes
“Clover, where’s Clover?” cried Rose Red, popping her head into the schoolroom, where Katy sat writing her composition. “Oh, Katy! there you are. I want you too. Come down to my room right away. I’ve such a thing to tell you!”
“What is it?” Tell me too!” said Bella Arkwright. Bella was a veritable “little pitcher,” of the kind mentioned in the Proverb, and had an insatiable curiosity to know every thing that other people knew.
“Tell you, Miss? I should really like to know why!” replied Rose, who was not at all fond of Bella.
“You’re real mean, and real unkind,” whined Bella. “You think you’re a great grown-up lady, and can have secrets. But you ain’t! You’re a little girl too,—most as little as me. So there!”
Rose made a face at her, and a sort of growling rush, which had the effect of sending Bella screaming down the hall. Then, returning to the school-room,—
“Do come, Katy,” she said: “find Clover, and hurry! Really and truly I want you. I feel as if I should burst if I don’t tell somebody right away what I’ve found out.”
Katy began to be curious. She went in pursuit of Clover, who was practising in one of the recitation-rooms, and the three girls ran together down Quaker Row.
“Now,” said Rose, locking the door, and pushing forward a chair for Katy and another for Clover, “swear that you won’t tell, for this is a real secret,—the greatest secret that ever was, and Mrs. Florence would flay me alive if she knew that I knew!” She paused to enjoy the effect of her words, and suddenly began to snuff the air in a peculiar manner.
“Girls,” she said, solemnly, “that little wretch of a Bella is in this room. I am sure of it.”
“What makes you think so?” cried the others supervised.
“I smell that dreadful pomatum that she puts on her hair! Don’t you notice it? She’s hidden somewhere.” Rose looked sharply about for a minute, then made a pounce, and from under the bed dragged a small kicking heap. It was the guilty Bella.
“What were you doing there, you bad child?” demanded Rose, seizing the kicking feet and holding them fast.