IT COMES TO A HEAD
Jennie Bruce was just as full of good humor as she could be. She may
have lacked reverence for teachers, precedent, the dignity of the
seniors, and honored custom; but nobody with a normal mind could really
be angry with her.
Her deportment marks were dreadfully low; but she was quick at her
studies and was really too kind-hearted to _mean_ to bother the
teachers.
She managed to get in and out of a dozen scrapes a day. Yet the
rollicking good-nature of the girl, and her frank honesty did much to
save her from serious punishment.
Jennie went on her care-free way, assured in her own mind that certain
of the rules of Pinewood Hall were only made to be broken. If a thought
came to her in class, or a desire to communicate with another scholar,
she could no more resist the temptation than she could fly.
"Miss Bruce! half an hour this afternoon on grammar rules for talking!"
"Oh, Miss Maybrick! I'm so sorry. I didn't think."
"Learn to think, then."
"Jennie, if you _must_ make such faces, please do so out of the view of
your classmates, I beg." This from gentle Miss Meader.
"I--I was just trying how it felt to be strangled with a cord. It says
here the _Thuggee_ did it in India as a religious practice."
"That's enough, Jennie!" as a giggle arose from the roomful of girls.
"Your excuses are worse than your sins."
And her thirst for knowledge! Of course, it was a desire for information
that was by no possibility of any value to either herself or the class.
"Is this sentence good English, Miss Halliday?" asked Jennie, after
scribbling industriously for some minutes, and then reading from her
paper: "'A girl was criticised by her teacher for the use of the word
"that," but it was proved that that "that" that that girl used was that
"that" that that girl should have used.' Is that right?"
"That is perfectly correct, Jennie," said the English teacher, grimly,
when the class had come to order, "but _you_ are altogether wrong. You
may show me that sentence written plainly forty times when you come to
the class to-morrow."
"Zowie!" murmured Jennie in Nancy's ear as they were excused. "I bet
she thought that hurt."
But the ingenious Jennie had recourse to a typewriter in one of the
offices which the girls could use if they wished. She put in forty slips
of tissue paper, with carbon sheets between each two, and wrote the
troublesome sentence on all forty slips at once!
"You know very well this was not what I meant when I gave you the task,
Jennie," commented Miss Halliday, yet having hard work not to smile.
"You particularly said to write it plainly," returned the demure Jennie.
"And what could be plainer than typewriting?"
These jokes, and their like, made her beloved by a certain number of the
girls, amused the others, and sometimes bothered her teachers a good
deal.
But there was not a girl in all Pinewood Hall who would have been of
such help to Nancy Nelson at this juncture as Jennie Bruce.
When Jennie was out of the building in recreation time, Nancy either
kept close in Number 30, or crept away to some empty office and conned
her lesson books industriously.
When Jennie was at hand Nancy began to see that she need fear little
trouble from the Montgomery clique. They were all afraid of Jennie's
sharp tongue. And after Cora had tried to be nasty to Nancy before a
crowd a couple of times, and Jennie had turned the laugh against her,
Nancy's enemies learned better.
But one noon Grace Montgomery received a letter which, after reading,
she passed around among her particular friends. It was eagerly read,
especially by Cora Rathmore.
That young lady immediately walked over to Nancy, who was sitting alone
reading, and she shook the letter in the surprised girl's face.
"Now I've got you, Miss!" she fairly hissed.
Nancy looked up, startled, but could not speak.
"Now we know where you came from, and what and who you are, Nancy
Nelson!" pursued Cora. "A girl like you--a nobody--a foundling--Oh! I'll
see if I have got to associate with such _scum_!"
She wheeled sharply away, and had Nancy recovered her powers of speech
she would have had no time to reply to this tirade.
But Nancy could not have spoken just then to save her life! The blow had
fallen at last. All she had feared since coming to Pinewood Hall was now
about to be realized.
In some way Grace Montgomery had learned the particulars of her early
life at Higbee School, though Cora might not have found it out, and
Grace had put the letter into the hands of Nancy's roommate.
What Cora would first do poor Nancy did not know. There would be some
terrible "blowup" the girl was sure. The story would spread all over the
school. All the girls must know that she was a mere nobody, apparently
dependent upon charity for her education and even for her food.
Oh! if she could only escape from it all--run away from Pinewood--go
somewhere so far, or so hidden, that none of these proud girls coming
from rich families could ever find and taunt her with her own miserable
story.
Yes, Nancy thought earnestly that afternoon of running away. Any
existence, it seemed to her then, would be better than suffering the
unkind looks and the doubtful whispers of her school companions.
Nancy was not afraid of ordinary things. The possibility of hunger and
cold did not daunt her. She knew that, if she left the school secretly,
and ran away and found a place to work, she might often be in need. But
if she could only go where people would not ask questions!
She was quite as old as Scorch O'Brien, she thought. And see how
independent that flame-haired youngster was! Nancy knew she could take
care of herself alone in the city as well as Scorch. She had enough
money left to get her to Cincinnati, and something over.
How she got through her lessons after dinner she never knew; but she
did, somehow. Then she crept up to her dormitory and to her delight
found it empty. She gathered together a few of her simplest possessions
and crammed them into her handbag. She took only those things that would
not be at once missed. She touched nothing on her bureau.
When she had locked the bag she opened the window and peered out. It was
already growing dark; but far away, on the frozen river, she could hear
the ring of skates and the silvery shouts of laughter from the girls.
Nobody stirred in the pinewood, nor in the shrubbery closer to the Hall.
Nancy waited for a minute to see if she was observed, and then she
tossed the bag into the middle of a clump of bushes not far from her
window.
She believed nobody had seen her. She closed the sash and picked up her
cap and coat. She rolled these into as small and compact a bundle as
possible and then left the room quietly.
Corinne Pevay was coming through the corridor.
"Hullo, Nancy Nelson!" she said, cheerfully, putting her hand upon the
younger girl's shoulder. "What did you want to be such a perfect little
brick for?"
"I--I don't know what you mean?" quoth Nancy, shrinking under the
senior's touch.
"Why, if you'd told Madame Schakael all about it the other night when
she caught you in Number 40, do you suppose she would have punished you
so harshly?"
"I--I couldn't tell on them," murmured Nancy, trying to hide her bundle.
"No. But what good did it do to try and save girls like Montgomery? They
blame you, just the same."
Nancy nodded, but said nothing.
"But _I_ know that you didn't tell on them; and so does Jennie Bruce.
Madame Schakael learned the names of the culprits by going from door to
door and finding out who were absent from their rooms. She did not have
to go to Number 30 at all. And you got no thanks for trying to shield
them."
Nancy continued silent.
"And one of them told _me_," said Corinne, pointedly, "that _you_ paid
for all those goodies they gorged themselves on; yet they froze you out
of the party. Is that right?"
"Oh, I--I'd rather not say, Miss Pevay," stammered Nancy.
"Humph! Well, you're a funny kid," said the senior, leaving her. "You'll
never get along in this girls' menagerie if you let 'em walk all over
you."
Nancy had been afraid that Corinne would go to the lower floor with her.
But when the bigger girl left her, she slipped down the stairs like a
streak and ran for the rear door of the West Side.
She saw nobody. The lower corridors seemed empty. She reached the
unlocked door and had her hand upon the knob. Indeed, she turned the
knob and pulled the door toward her.
The cold evening air blew in upon her face. It was the Breath of the
Wide World--that world that lay before her if she left the shelter of
Pinewood Hall and the bitterness of her life here.
And then, for the first time, a thought struck her. She had been
forbidden to leave the building, save at stated times with the physical
instructor, until the Christmas holidays, which were three weeks away.
Madame Schakael had bound her, on her honor, to remain a prisoner in the
Hall until the ban of displeasure should be lifted. She had tacitly
promised to obey, and therefore the Madame had set no spy upon Nancy's
footsteps. There was no watching of the girls suffering under
punishment. That was not the system of Pinewood Hall and its mistress.
How could Nancy break her word to Madame Schakael? Never had the Madame
spoken otherwise than kindly to her. Even when she meted out punishment
to her, Nancy knew that the punishment was just. The Madame could have
done no less.
The principal had not even urged Nancy to report her schoolmates on the
night of the party at Number 30, West Side. She had accepted her
statement, as far as it went, as perfectly honest, too. She had not
punished Jennie Bruce.
"Why, I _can't_ run away and make Madame Schakael trouble!" gasped
Nancy, closing the door again softly and crouching there in the dark
hallway. "Mr. Gordon might make her trouble. Besides--I've promised."
The girl was much shaken by her fear of what cruelty Cora Rathmore and
Grace Montgomery would mete out to her. Yet she could not play what
seemed to her mind a "mean trick" upon the doll-like principal who had
been so kind to her.
"Oh, dear me! I can't go--I can't go!" moaned Nancy Nelson. "It wouldn't
be right. Madame Schakael said I wasn't to go out----"
And then she remembered the bag she had tossed out of the window. She
must have that bag back, if she wasn't going away. If it remained there
over night perhaps Mr. Pease, or Samuel, would find it.
And then the story would all come out, and her position in the school
would be worse!
But Nancy knew that she had no right to leave the building at this
particular time. That was the plain understanding, that recreation hours
should be spent within the Hall, unless Miss Etching invited her to join
a walking party.
The physical instructor was now down on the ice with the girls. Nancy
might have asked one of the other teachers for permission to step out
for just a minute; but that would entail much explanation.
The brush clump into which she had thrown her bag was around the farther
corner of the wing. And just then she heard laughing and talking as the
first group from the river approached the Hall.
Ah! there was Jennie. Nancy identified her jolly laugh and chatter
immediately. She could trust Jennie. Jennie would slip around the house
and bring in the fatal bag secretly, and keep still about it.
So Nancy kept back in the dark hall and let the troop of laughing girls
pass her without saying a word. Jennie came last and Nancy seized her
arm.
"Goodness to gracious and eight hands around!" gasped Jennie. "How you
startled me. Is it you, Nancy?"
"Hush! Yes."
"Well, what's the matter? Whose old cat is dead now?" demanded Jennie,
in an equally low voice.
"I--I threw my bag out of the window, Jennie. Will you get it?"
whispered the excited girl.
"Your bag?"
"Yes, yes!"
"What under the sun did you do it for?"
"I--I can't tell you here," whispered Nancy.
"What have you got _there_?" demanded Jennie, suddenly, pulling at the
bundle under the other girl's arm.
"My--my coat."
"And your hat?"
"Ye--yes."
"Oh, you little chump! You are starting to run away!"
"No, I'm not."
"But you thought of it?"
"Oh, Jennie! I don't see how I _can_ stay here. Cora and Grace know
everything."
"I know it--nasty cats! But I'd face 'em. There's nothing to be ashamed
of," declared Jennie. But she said it a little weakly. She knew that
many of the girls would be just foolish enough to follow the lead of the
Montgomery girl and Cora Rathmore.
"I--I've _got_ to face 'em, I suppose," murmured Nancy. "I just thought
that I couldn't run away."
"Huh! why not?" asked her friend, curiously.
"Because Madame Schakael put me on my honor not to leave the Hall in
recreation hours without permission."
"Oh! goodness!" gasped Jennie. Then she burst out laughing, rocking
herself to and fro, doubled up in the darkness of the hallway.
"What a delightful kid you are, Nance!" she cried, at last. "And you
threw your handbag, all packed, out of the window?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'll go get it. But you certainly _will_ be the death of me!"
cried Jennie, and opened the door again.
"Oh! I'll thank you so much," whispered Nancy.
"Go on upstairs and put that coat and hat away," ordered Jennie, with
sudden gruffness. "You're no more fit to roam this wild desert of
boarding-school life alone than a baby in long clothes! Run, now!" and
Jennie darted out of the door.
But it was easier to say than to do! When Nancy stole back into the main
hall there were a dozen girls, at least, gathered there waiting for the
supper gong. And among them were some of those who had, all the time,
treated Nancy with the least consideration.
Nancy dropped her gaze, so as not to see their unpleasant looks, and
stole toward the stairway with her bundle. But suddenly Cora's sharp
voice halted her. She had not seen Cora at first.
"Yes! there she goes up to our room. _That's_ the girl _I_ have to room
with. But I'm going to tell Madame Schakael right now that I sha'n't do
so any longer."
Nancy's head came up and she flushed and paled. The lash of Cora's words
roused her temper as it had been roused once before. Yet all she said in
reply to the cruel speech was:
"Why can't you let me alone, Cora Rathmore?"
"I'll let you alone!" repeated Cora, with a shrill laugh. "I guess I
will. And every other _nice_ girl will let you alone, Miss Nelson. Don't
be afraid that you'll be worried by friends here. We all know what you
are now."
Nancy had reached the foot of the stairs and was starting up. She
whirled suddenly to face her tormentor. The coat and cap fell from her
grasp. She clenched her hands tightly and cried:
"Then what _am_ I, Cora? What have I done that makes me so bad in your
eyes? What have you got against me?"
"You're a nobody. You came from a charity school. The woman who is
principal doesn't know where you came from. Your parents may be in jail
for all anybody knows," returned Cora.
"You haven't any people, and you stayed in that Higbee School at Maiden
all the year round--vacations and all. The girls didn't like you there
any more than they do here.
"Ha! Miss Nobody from No-place-at-all! that's what you are!" sneered
Nancy's roommate. "How do you expect the nice girls here at Pinewood
Hall will want to associate with you?
"And let me tell you, Miss, that _I_ refuse to room with you another
day. I shall tell Madame Schakael so right now!" concluded Cora, her
face very red and her black eyes flashing angrily.