AS a matter of fact, Meadowcroft made no attempt to return to South
Paulding that night. He hadn’t realized the fall in temperature, but
glancing out the window once or twice during the last hour, saw one
pedestrian and then another fall to the ground and concluded that the
first icy walking of the winter was upon them. Slush and mire made hard
progress for his crutches, but ice rendered it perilous and practically
impossible. He decided to spend the night at the hotel and wrote a note
to explain the circumstance to his sister.
He would naturally have sent the note by Tommy, but still feeling that
the boy was carrying on some secret mischief, he decided to give it to
Betty instead. Realizing that she might not return to the main room
after her recitation, he went to the door of the room where the class
in Latin Composition was held at this hour. As he appeared on the
threshold, the heart of the faithful Tommy grew cold.
“Pardon me, Miss Cummings, for disturbing your class, but may I speak
to Miss Pogany?” Meadowcroft asked courteously, running his eye over
the crowded room but failing to find the girl who was conspicuous for
her lovely face as well as for her height, though she was no longer
“Bouncing Bet.”
Miss Cummings colored. She stood very much in awe of the elegant
gentleman who had taken the place of the plain and rustic Mr. Appleton;
and her confusion was increased by the fact that she couldn’t remember
Miss Pogany’s being in this class at all.
“She isn’t here--to-day, Mr. Meadowcroft,” she faltered, and
Meadowcroft was amazed. In his perplexity, he frowned darkly.
Tommy Finnemore quailed before that frown. Then suddenly light dawned
upon him. Nothing was lost upon Tommy, and he, too, had drawn the
proper conclusion from glances out the window. Between his eagerness
to shield and serve Betty and his disinclination to lie to his friend,
with, moreover, a leaven of wholesome fear that the dignity of Mr.
Meadowcroft’s new rôle imparted, he forgot that he should have raised
his hand and asked permission to speak. And his voice, which was in
reality all ready to tremble, sounded rather insolent.
“She and Rose made up their minds to go home early, it’s so slippery,
Mr. Meadowcroft,” he said.
Meadowcroft looked at the boy sharply.
“Thank you, Finnemore, but please remember you are not expected to
speak out in that manner without permission,” he said curtly, and, with
an inclination of his head towards Miss Cummings, left the room.
He regretted immediately speaking unkindly to Tommy, and his momentary
indignation at Betty’s assumption of independence died out. Still he
rather wondered at it and was vaguely troubled. Had the girls been
forced to walk home, they would, indeed, have needed to start early,
but in any event they should have notified him. On the contrary,
however, they were expected always to use the train in inclement
weather, and they should have attended their class and gone home with
the other children at three o’clock. It was as inconsiderate of Betty
to risk the blind girl’s limbs on the icy turnpike as it was to leave
school in that fashion. It didn’t seem like gentle, docile Betty; but
Meadowcroft decided that where Rose was concerned the unselfish girl
was inclined to be headstrong.
Later, he realized that he should have to speak to Betty of the matter,
and still later he was forced to the conclusion that he must do so
publicly, as the school-master. She and Rose had broken the rules
deliberately. Their whole class knew it, and quite likely, by this
time, everyone in the school. If he was faithful to his duty as Mr.
Appleton’s representative, he must deal with them as he would have
dealt with others who offended similarly. But he said to himself that
he would speak so kindly that the sting would be removed from the
reproof.
He brought up the matter on Thursday morning at the conclusion of the
opening exercises. Betty was quite unprepared. Tommy had told her of
Meadowcroft’s coming into the Latin Composition class, and of the
manner in which he had accounted for their absence. She believed,
with Tommy, that the excuse had been taken in good part. She had even
decided that it would also serve for other slippery Wednesdays, should
such occur; and only on such Wednesdays would Mr. Meadowcroft have
occasion for coming into the class. But she regretted extremely that
Miss Cummings’s attention should have been called to their absence.
“There is a matter I wish to bring up before we begin work this
morning,” Meadowcroft announced in his beautiful voice; and Betty
shared the general anticipation of a pleasant conclusion. “It is the
matter of leaving the school-grounds without permission before school
is dismissed. As I understand it, the rule is that you are not to be
excused from a class without a written order from parent or guardian,
nor at any other time without permission from your teacher. Is it
possible, Miss Pogany, that you and Miss Harrow do not understand this?”
In all her life, Betty Pogany had never been spoken to, in the way
of reproof, at school; and though this was due in part to the fact
that she had been Bouncing Bet so long, it was also due to good
intention. And this, coming from her particular friend in the person
of school-master, was the more appalling. It seemed to the girl as if
the school-room were revolving round her in a cloud of blackness. She
couldn’t speak, and forgetting his intention to be very gentle, Mr.
Meadowcroft repeated the question sternly.
“Yes, sir,” she gasped faintly. “I mean--no, sir. I mean, I did--I
understood. Mr. Appleton told me.”
“What! do you mean you deliberately broke the rule yesterday when you
went home at ten minutes before two?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir,” the girl owned, looking so white and wretched that his
momentary warmth became pity. It was unfair and unkind of him to turn
her maternal concern for Rose into wilful wrong-doing. He only wished
that about seventy of his audience were absent.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have said deliberate. It’s an ugly word,” he said
very kindly. “I daresay it was only thoughtlessness and I feel sure it
won’t happen again. I shall have to ask you both to learn the first
paragraph of the first book of Cæsar and recite it to me at the close
of school to-morrow, and that will be the end of it.”
That night Meadowcroft felt sure that Betty would drop in upon him at
Mrs. Phillips’s to say what she couldn’t say before the whole school.
He was greatly disappointed when the evening passed without bringing
her, but felt that something at home had kept her. Sufficient snow fell
to make the walking safe and not too much to make it uncomfortable,
so the girls weren’t on the train next morning. But though Betty
arrived at school in good time, she didn’t, as he had expected, come
to him. Recess and the longer intermission at noon passed without
effort towards explanation on the part of the girl. At the close of the
session she and Rose presented themselves at his desk to recite the
passage of Latin prose.
Rose was as gay and glib as ever as she rattled off the words like
doggerel. But Betty was so white and sober that one might have believed
the account of the division of Gaul was a tragedy. Meadowcroft was
filled with compunction. He must have hurt her sadly, he decided, and
was ready to be all kindness and perhaps even apologetic the moment she
should give him an opening by vouchsafing a bare word of explanation.
But the bare word was not forthcoming. For a week thereafter he saw the
girl only in the school-room. Presently it came to him that Betty was
avoiding him and he was forced to conclude that she was sulky because
of the reproof he had felt compelled to administer--deserved reproof.
He was surprised, for he would as soon have expected Tommy to sulk as
this girl whose transparent frankness he had always admired. It was
almost inconceivable.
Tommy Finnemore, though he might be plotting secret mischief, was
the same odd, lovable, frank comrade as always. As a matter of fact,
however, Tommy was sailing before the wind. On the Wednesday following
that upon which the girls had been detected, the boy was amazed to see
Betty and Rose leave the building again instead of going into class.
It was a venturesome act, truly, and Tommy realized that the necessity
must be imperative, indeed. They were facing real peril, and Tommy was
too loyal to Betty to allow them to face it alone. He couldn’t serve
them further by remaining. And though he couldn’t share their secret,
he would in any event share their peril. Accordingly, he, too, left
school instead of going into recitation with his class.
Miss Cummings didn’t miss him, but she noticed to-day that the girls
weren’t in class. She decided that they were not taking the course this
year and that Mr. Meadowcroft now understood the fact. Their names
weren’t down and she didn’t take the names of the class for permanent
record until after the first test which came in another week and which
would be likely to weed out a goodly number of students and reduce the
class to more suitable size. As for Meadowcroft, the last thing he
would have expected was a repetition of a twice-forbidden act, and he
took it for granted the girls were where they belonged during school
hours thenceforward. The greater his amazement, therefore, when two
weeks after the first occurrence, he discovered by chance that the
girls had run away again.