Salisbury had beckoned Polly to her side where she reposed on her
throne; for it was beautiful and stately enough for one, and quite
worthy of royalty itself.
"Polly," said Miss Salisbury, in quite a low tone only fitted for
Polly's ear, "do you think you could find a seat, like this beautiful
one of mine, for sister? I should really enjoy it so very much more if
sister had one also and she would prize the attention very much, Polly,
from you girls."
So Polly, fired with the laudable desire to find one exactly like Miss
Salisbury's very own, for "sister," at last was just so fortunate. So
that was also flower-trimmed, with trailing vines to finish it off with.
And every year, the first thing the girls did after dancing around a bit
to rest their feet after the long drive, was to set to work to collect
the vines and ferns, and decorate the two stone seats.
Then with quite a good deal of pomp and ceremony, the girls escorted the
two teachers to their thrones, unpacked the little bag of books and
magazines, and arranged some cushions and shawls about them. And then
Miss Salisbury always said with a sweet smile, "Thank you, my dears."
And Miss Anstice said the same; although, try as hard as she would, her
smile never could be sweet like Miss Salisbury's. And then off the girls
would go to "exploring," as they called rambling in the Glen, the
under-teachers taking them in charge.
And now Polly Pepper ran to her hamper, which she saw in a pile where
the baskets had been heaped by the maids. "There it is," pointing to the
tag sticking up; "oh, help me,--not you, Alexia," as Alexia ran up as
usual, to help forward any undertaking Polly Pepper might have in mind.
"Dear me! you might almost kill your arm."
"This old arm," cried Alexia,--"I'm sick and tired of it."
"Well, you better take care of it," cried Polly gaily, "and then it
won't be an old arm, but it will be as good as brand new, Alexia. Oh,
one of the other girls, do come and help me."
"What do you want, Polly?" cried some of the girls, racing up to her.
"I want to get out my hamper," said Polly, pointing to the tag sticking
up "high and dry" amid a stack of baskets. "My tin botany case is in
it; I must get the ferns I promised to bring home to Phronsie."
"You stand away, all of ye." The old man Kimball, his horses out of the
shafts, and well taken care of, now drew near, and swept off with his
ample hand the bunch of girls. "Which one is't? Oh, that ere one with
the tag," answering his own question. "Well, now, I'll git that for you
jest as easy as rolling off a log. One--two--three--there she comes!"
And, one, two, three, and here she did come! And in a trice Polly had
the cover up, and out flew the little green tin botany case; and within
it being an iron spoon and little trowel, off flew Polly on happy feet
to unearth the treasures that were to beautify Phronsie's little garden;
a bunch of girls following to see the operation.
The magazine fell idly to the lap of Miss Salisbury. She sat dreamily
back, resting her head against the boulder. "Sister," she said softly,
"this is a happy custom we have started. I trust nothing will ever
prevent our holding our annual picnic."
"Yes," said Miss Anstice absently. She was very much interested in a
story she had begun, and she hated to have Miss Salisbury say a word.
Although she had on a stiff, immaculate white gown (for on such a
festival as the annual picnic, she always dressed in white), still she
was not in the same sweet temper that the principal was enjoying, and
she held her thumb and finger in the place.
"Yes, the picnic is very good," she said, feeling that something was
expected of her, "if we didn't get worms and bugs crawling over the
tablecloth."
"Oh sister!" exclaimed Miss Salisbury, quite shocked; "it is no time to
think of worms and bugs, I'm sure, on such a beautiful occasion as
this."
"Still, they are here," said Miss Anstice; "there is one now," looking
down at the hem of her gown. "_Ugh!_ go right away," slapping her book
at it. Then her thumb and finger flew out, and she lost her place, and
the bug ran away, and she added somewhat tartly, "For my own taste, I
should really prefer a festival in the schoolroom."
When it came to spreading the feast, not one of the maids was allowed to
serve. They could unpack the hampers, and hand the dishes and eatables
to the girls, and run, and wait, and tend. But no one but the Salisbury
girls must lay the snowy cloth, dress it up with flowers, with little
knots at the corners, concealing the big stones that kept the tablecloth
from flapping in any chance wind. And then they all took turns in
setting the feast forth, and arranging all the goodies. And some one had
to make the coffee, with a little coterie to help her. The crotched
sticks were always there just as they had left them where they hung the
kettle over the stone oven. And old man Kimball set one of the younger
drivers to make the fire--and a rousing good one it was--where they
roasted their corn and potatoes. And another one brought up the water
from the spring that bubbled up clear and cold in the rocky ravine, so
when all was ready it was a feast fit for a king, or rather the queen
and her royal subjects.
And then Miss Salisbury and "sister" were escorted with all appropriate
ceremonies down from their stone thrones,--and one had the head and the
other the foot of the feast spread on the grass,--to sit on a stone
draped with a shawl, and to be waited on lovingly by the girls, who
threw themselves down on the ground, surrounding the snowy cloth. And
they sat two or three rows deep; and those in the front row had to pass
the things, of course, to the back-row girls.
"Oh, you're spilling jelly-cake crumbs all down my back," proclaimed
Alexia, with a shudder. "Rose Harding," looking at the girl just back of
her, "can't you eat over your own lap, pray tell?"
"Well, give me your seat then," suggested Rose, with another good bite
from the crumbly piece in her hand, "if you don't like what the back-row
girls do."
"No, I'm not going to," said Alexia, "catch me! but you needn't eat all
over my hair. Ugh! there goes another," and she squirmed so she knocked
off the things in her neighbor's as well as her own lap.
"Oh dear me! Keep your feet to yourself, Alexia Rhys," said the
neighbor; "there goes my egg in all the dirt--and I'd just gotten it
shelled."
"All the easier for the bugs," observed Alexia sweetly; "see, they're
already appropriating it. And I guess you'd kick and wriggle if some one
put jelly cake down your back," returning to her grievance,--"slippery,
slimy jelly cake," twisting again at the remembrance.
"Well, you needn't kick the things out of my lap. I didn't put the jelly
cake down your back," retorted the neighbor, beginning to shell her
second egg.
Oh dear! was ever anything quite so good in all this world as that feast
at the "Salisbury picnic!"
"I didn't suppose those baskets could bring out so much, nor such
perfectly delicious things," sighed Polly Pepper, in an interval of rest
before attacking one of Philena's chocolate cakes.
"Polly, Polly Pepper," called a girl opposite, "give me one of your
little lemon tarts. You did bring 'em this year, didn't you?" anxiously.
"Yes, indeed," answered Polly; "why, where are they?" peering up and
down the festal, not "board," but tablecloth.
"Don't tell me they are gone," cried the girl, leaning over to look for
herself.
"I'm afraid they are," said Polly; "oh, I'm so sorry, Agatha!"
"You should have spoken before, my child," said a parlor boarder, who
had eaten only three of Mrs. Fisher's tarts, and adjusting her
eyeglasses.
"Why, I've only just gotten through eating bread and butter," said
Agatha. "I can't eat cake until that's done."
"A foolish waste of time," observed the parlor boarder; "bread and
butter is for every day; cake and custards and flummery for high
holidays," she added with quite an air.
"Hush up, do," cried Alexia, who had small respect for the parlor
boarders and their graces, "and eat what you like, Penelope. I'm going
to ransack this table for a tart for you, Agatha."
She sent keen, bird-like glances all up and down the length of the
tablecloth. "Yes, no--yes, it is." She pounced upon a lemon tart hiding
under a spray of sweet fern, and handed it in triumph across. "There you
are, Agatha! now don't say I never did anything for you."
"Oh, how sweet!" cried Agatha, burying her teeth in the flaky tart.
"I should think it was sour," observed Amy Garrett; "lemons usually
are."
"Don't try to be clever, Amy child," said Alexia, "it isn't expected at
a picnic."
"It's never expected where you are," retorted Amy sharply.
"Oh dear, dear! that's pretty good," cried Alexia, nowise disconcerted,
as she loved a joke just as much at herself as at the expense of any
one else, while the others burst into a merry laugh.
"There's one good thing about Alexia Rhys," the "Salisbury girls" had
always said, "she can take any amount of chaff, and not stick her finger
in her eye and whimper."
So now she smiled serenely. "Oh dear, dear! I wish I could eat some
more," she said. "I haven't tasted your orange jelly, Clem, nor as much
as looked at your French sandwiches, Silvia. What is the reason one can
eat so very little at a picnic, I wonder?" She drew a long breath, and
regarded them all with a very injured expression.
"Hear that, girls!" cried Silvia; "isn't that rich, when Alexia has been
eating every blessed minute just as fast as she could!"
"I suppose that is what we all have been doing," observed Alexia
placidly.
Miss Salisbury had been a happy observer of all the fun and nonsense
going on around her, and renewing her youth when she had dearly loved
picnics; but it was not so with Miss Anstice. At the foot of the festal
tablecloth, she had been viewing from the corners of her eyes the
inroads of various specimens of the insect creation and several other
peripatetic creatures that seemed to belong to no particular species but
to a new order of beings originated for this very occasion. She had held
herself in bravely, although eating little, being much too busy in
keeping watch of these intruders, who all seemed bent on running over
her food and her person, to hide in all conceivable folds of her white
gown. And she was now congratulating herself on the end of the feast,
which about this time should be somewhere in sight, when a goggle-eyed
bug, at least so it seemed to her distraught vision, pranced with agile
steps directly for her lap, to disappear at once. And it got on to her
nerves.
"Oh--_ow_! Take it off." Miss Anstice let her plate fly, and skipped to
her feet. But looking out for the goggle-eyed bug, she thought of little
else, and stepped into some more of the jelly cake--slipped, and
precipitated herself into the middle of the feast.
XIV MISS SALISBURY'S STORY
"Oh Miss Anstice!" cried the "Salisbury girls," jumping to their feet.
"_Sister!_" exclaimed Miss Salisbury, dropping her plate, and letting
all her sweet, peaceful reflections fly to the four winds.
"I never did regard picnics as pleasant affairs," gasped Miss Anstice,
as the young hands raised her, "and now they are--quite--quite
detestable." She looked at her gown, alas! no longer immaculate.
"If you could wipe my hands first, young ladies," sticking out those
members, on which were plentiful supplies of marmalade and jelly cake,
"I should be much obliged. Never mind the gown yet," she added with
asperity.
"I'll do that," cried Alexia, flying at her with two or three napkins.
"Alexia, keep your seat." Miss Anstice turned on her. "It is quite bad
enough, without your heedless fingers at work on it."
[Illustration: "I NEVER DID REGARD PICNICS AS PLEASANT AFFAIRS," GASPED
MISS ANSTICE.]
"I won't touch the old thing," declared Alexia, in a towering passion,
and forgetting it was not one of the girls. "And I may be heedless, but
I _can_ be polite," and she threw down the napkins, and turned her back
on the whole thing.
"Alexia!" cried Polly, turning very pale; and, rushing up to her, she
bore her away under the trees. "Why, Alexia Rhys, you've talked awfully
to Miss Anstice--just think, the sister of our Miss Salisbury!"
"Was that old thing a Salisbury?" asked Alexia, quite unmoved. "I
thought it was a rude creature that didn't know what it was to have good
manners."
"Alexia, Alexia!" mourned Polly, and for the first time in Alexia's
remembrance wringing her hands, "to think you should do such a thing!"
Alexia, seeing Polly wring her hands, felt quite aghast at herself.
"Polly, don't do that," she begged.
"Oh, I can't help it." And Polly's tears fell fast.
Alexia gave her one look, as she stood there quite still and pale,
unable to stop the tears racing over her cheeks, turned, and fled with
long steps back to the crowd of girls surrounding poor Miss Anstice,
Miss Salisbury herself wiping the linen gown with an old napkin in her
deft fingers.
"I beg your pardon," cried Alexia gustily, and plunging up unsteadily.
"I was bad to say such things."
"You were, indeed," assented Miss Anstice tartly. "Sister, that is quite
enough; the gown cannot possibly be made any better with your incessant
rubbing."
Miss Salisbury gave a sigh, and got up from her knees, and put down the
napkin. Then she looked at Alexia. "She is very sorry, sister," she said
gently. "I am sure Alexia regrets exceedingly her hasty speech."
"Hasty?" repeated Miss Anstice, with acrimony, "it was quite
impertinent; and I cannot remember when one of our young ladies has done
such a thing."
All the blood in Alexia's body seemed to go to her sallow cheeks when
she heard that. That she should be the first and only Salisbury girl to
be so bad, quite overcame her, and she looked around for Polly Pepper to
help her out. And Polly, who had followed her up to the group, begged,
"Do, dear Miss Anstice, forgive her." And so did all the girls, even
those who did not like Alexia one bit, feeling sorry for her now. Miss
Anstice relented enough to say, "Well, we will say no more about it; I
dare say you did not intend to be impertinent." And then they all sat
down again, and everybody tried to be as gay as possible while the feast
went on.
And by the time they sang the "Salisbury School Songs,"--for they had
several very fine ones, that the different classes had composed,--there
was such a tone of good humor prevailing, everybody getting so very
jolly, that no one looking on would have supposed for a moment that a
single unpleasant note had been struck. And Miss Anstice tried not to
look at her gown; and Miss Salisbury had a pretty pink tinge in her
cheeks, and her eyes were blue and serene, without the tired look that
often came into them.
"Now for the story--oh, that is the best of all!" exclaimed Polly
Pepper, when at last, protesting that they couldn't eat another morsel,
they all got up from the feast, leaving it to the maids.
"Isn't it!" echoed the girls. "Oh, dear Miss Salisbury, I _am_ so glad
it is time for you to tell it." All of which pleased Miss Salisbury very
much indeed, for it was the custom at this annual festival to wind up
the afternoon with a story by the principal, when all the girls would
gather at her feet to listen to it, as she sat in state in her stone
chair.
"Is it?" she cried, the pink tinge on her cheek getting deeper. "Well,
do you know, I think I enjoy, as much as my girls, the telling of this
annual story."
"Oh, you can't enjoy it _as much_," said one impulsive young voice.
Miss Salisbury smiled indulgently at her. "Well, now, if you are ready,
girls, I will begin."
"Oh, yes, we are--we are," the bright groups, scattered on the grass at
her feet, declared.
"To-day I thought I would tell you of my school days when I was as young
as you," began Miss Salisbury.
"Oh--oh!"
"Miss Salisbury, I just love you for that!" exclaimed the impulsive
girl, and jumping out of her seat, she ran around the groups to the
stone chair. "I do, Miss Salisbury, for I did so want to hear all about
when you were a schoolgirl."
"Well, go back to your place, Fanny, and you shall hear a little of my
school life," said Miss Salisbury gently.
"No--no; the whole of it," begged Fanny earnestly, going slowly back.
"My dear child, I could not possibly tell you the whole," said Miss
Salisbury, smiling; "it must be one little picture of my school days."
"Do sit down, Fanny," cried one of the other girls impatiently; "you are
hindering it all."
So Fanny flew back to her place, and Miss Salisbury without any more
interruptions, began:
"You see, girls, you must know to begin with, that our father--sister's
and mine--was a clergyman in a small country parish; and as there were a
great many mouths to feed, and young, growing minds to feed as well,
besides ours, why there was a great deal of considering as to ways and
means constantly going on at the parsonage. Well, as I was the eldest,
of course the question came first, what to do with Amelia."
"Were you Amelia?" asked Fanny.
"Yes. Well, after talking it over a great deal,--and I suspect many
sleepless nights spent by my good father and mother,--it was at last
decided that I should be sent to boarding school; for I forgot to tell
you, I had finished at the academy."
"Yes; sister was very smart," broke in Miss Anstice proudly--"she won't
tell you that; so I must."
"Oh sister, sister," protested Miss Salisbury.
"Yes, she excelled all the boys and girls."
"Did they have boys at that school?" interrupted Philena, in amazement.
"Oh, how very nice, Miss Salisbury!"
"I should just love to go to school with boys," declared ever so many of
the girls ecstatically.
"Why don't you take boys at our school, Miss Salisbury?" asked Silvia
longingly.
Miss Anstice looked quite horrified at the very idea; but Miss Salisbury
laughed. "It is not the custom now, my dear, in private schools. In my
day--you must remember that was a long time ago--there were academies
where girls and boys attended what would be called a high school now."
"Oh!"
"And I went to one in the next town until it was thought best for me to
be sent to boarding school."
"And she was very smart; she took all the prizes at the academy, and the
principal said--" Miss Anstice was herself brought up quickly by her
sister.
"If you interrupt so much, I never shall finish my story, Anstice," she
said.
"I want the girls to understand this," said Miss Anstice with decision.
"The principal said she was the best educated scholar he had ever seen
graduated from Hilltop Academy."
"Well, now if you have finished," said Miss Salisbury, laughing, "I will
proceed. So I was despatched by my father to a town about thirty miles
away, to a boarding school kept by the widow of a clergyman who had been
a college classmate. Well, I was sorry to leave all my young brothers
and sisters, you may be sure, while my mother--girls, I haven't even now
forgotten the pang it cost me to kiss my mother good-bye."
Miss Salisbury stopped suddenly, and let her gaze wander off to the
waving tree-tops; and Miss Anstice fell into a revery that kept her face
turned away.
"But it was the only way I could get an education; and you know I could
not be fitted for a teacher, which was to be my life work, unless I
went; so I stifled all those dreadful feelings which anticipated my
homesickness, and pretty soon I found myself in the boarding school."
"How many scholars were there, Miss Salisbury?" asked Laura Page, who
was very exact.
"Fifteen girls," said Miss Salisbury.
"Oh dear me, what a little bit of a school!" exclaimed one girl.
"The schools were not as large in those days," said Miss Salisbury. "You
must keep in mind the great difference between that time and this, my
dear. Well, and when I was once there, I had quite enough to do to keep
me from being homesick, I can assure you, through the day; because, in
addition to lessons, there was the sewing hour."
"Sewing? Oh my goodness me!" exclaimed Alexia. "You didn't have to sew
at that school, did you, Miss Salisbury?"
"I surely did," replied Miss Salisbury, "and very glad I have been,
Alexia, that I learned so much in that sewing hour. I have seriously
thought, sister and I, of introducing the plan into our school."
"Oh, don't, Miss Salisbury," screamed the girls. "Ple--ase don't make us
sew." Some of them jumped to their feet in distress.
"I shall die," declared Alexia tragically, "if we have to sew."
There was such a general gloom settled over the entire party that Miss
Salisbury hastened to say, "I don't think, girls, we can do it, because
something else equally important would have to be given up to make the
time." At which the faces brightened up.
"Well, I was only to stay at this school a year," went on Miss
Salisbury, "because, you see, it was as much as my father could do to
pay for that time; so it was necessary to use every moment to advantage.
So I studied pretty hard; and I presume this is one reason why the
incident I am going to tell you about was of such a nature; for I was
over-tired, though that should be no excuse," she added hastily.
"Oh sister," said Miss Anstice nervously, "don't tell them that story. I
wouldn't."
"It may help them, to have a leaf out of another young person's life,
Anstice," said Miss Salisbury, gravely.
"Well, but--"
"And so, every time when I thought I must give up and go home, I was so
hungry to see my father and mother, and the little ones--"
"Was Miss Anstice one of the little ones?" asked Fanny, with a curious
look at the crow's-feet and faded eyes of the younger Miss Salisbury.
"Yes, she was: there were two boys came in between; then Anstice, then
Jane, Harriett, Lemuel, and the baby."
"Oh my!" gasped Alexia, tumbling over into Polly Pepper's lap.
"Eight of us; so you see, it would never do for the one who was having
so much money spent upon her, to waste a single penny of it. When I once
got to teaching, I was to pay it all back."
"And did you--did you?" demanded curious Fanny.
"Did she?--oh, girls!" It was Miss Anstice who almost gasped this,
making every girl turn around.
"Never mind," Miss Salisbury telegraphed over their heads, to "sister,"
which kept her silent. But she meant to tell sometime.
Polly Pepper, all this time, hadn't moved, but sat with hands folded in
her lap. What if she had given up and flown home to Mamsie and the
little brown house before Mr. King discovered her homesickness and
brought Phronsie! Supposing she hadn't gone in the old stagecoach that
day when she first left Badgertown to visit in Jasper's home! Just
supposing it! She turned quite pale, and held her breath, while Miss
Salisbury proceeded.
"And now comes the incident that occurred during that boarding-school
year, that I have intended for some time to tell you girls, because it
may perhaps help you in some experience where you will need the very
quality that I lacked on that occasion."
"Oh sister!" expostulated Miss Anstice.
"It was a midwinter day, cold and clear and piercing." Miss Salisbury
shivered a bit, and drew the shawl put across the back of her stone
seat, closer around her. "Mrs. Ferguson--that was the name of the
principal--had given the girls a holiday to take them to a neighboring
town; there was to be a concert, I remember, and some other treats; and
the scholars were, as you would say, 'perfectly wild to go,'" and she
smiled indulgently at her rapt audience. "Well, I was not going."
"Oh Miss Salisbury!" exclaimed Amy Garrett in sorrow, as if the
disappointment were not forty years in the background.
"No. I decided it was not best for me to take the money, although my
father had written me that I could, when the holiday had been planned
some time before. And besides, I thought I could do some extra studying
ahead while the girls were away. Understand, I didn't really think of
doing wrong then; although afterward I did the wrong thing."
"_Sister!_" reproved Miss Anstice. She could not sit still now, but got
out of her stone chair, and paced up and down.