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CONCERNING BELINDA
BOOKS BY
ELEANOR HOYT BRAINERD
"CONCERNING BELINDA"
"NANCY'S COUNTRY CHRISTMAS AND OTHER STORIES"
"THE MISDEMEANORS OF NANCY"
[Illustration: "A gay, dimpling girl and a stalwart, handsome
man were whirling down Fifth Avenue"]
CONCERNING
BELINDA
BY
ELEANOR HOYT BRAINERD
ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRISON FISHER
AND
KATHARINE N. RICHARDSON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1905
Copyright, 1904, 1905, by
The Curtis Publishing Company
Copyright, 1905, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
Published, September, 1905
_All rights reserved,
including that of translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian._
[Illustration]
AN APOLOGY
To all principals of New York boarding-schools, the author of these
sketches offers humble apologies for having approached those excellent
institutions chiefly from their humorous side.
That the city boarding-school has its earnest and serious phases, its
charming and sensible pupils, no rational mortal could deny; but each
finishing school has, also, its Amelias, and their youthful absurdities
offer tempting material to the writer of tales.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Belinda and the Twelve 3
II. The Musical Romance of Amelia 27
III. The Elopement of Evangeline Marie 43
IV. A Wolf in the Fold 59
V. The Black Sheep's Christmas 81
VI. The Blighted Being 99
VII. The Passing of an Affinity 117
VIII. The Queer Little Thing 135
IX. A Continuous Performance 157
X. Adelina and the Drama 177
[Illustration]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"A gay, dimpling girl and a stalwart, handsome man were whirling
down Fifth Avenue" _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
"Amelia touched her guitar with a white, pudgy hand" 32
"For a few mornings past Belinda had noticed something
unusual about the morning expedition" 36
"'It's scandalous, madam'" 38
"... curled his mustache airily, and allowed his glance to
rove boldly over the display of youthful femininity" 46
"'I heard him say, "Grand Central, and hurry"'" 50
"'Your game's up, and you don't marry an heiress this trip'" 54
"The girls on the bed drew their knees up to their chins" 102
"They offered her caramels with fervent sympathy" 106
"'A dark man is coming into your life'" 120
"... wasted her substance in riotous buying of photographs" 124
"Cynthia quite forgot to go back to the French class" 126
Concerning Belinda
CHAPTER I
BELINDA AND THE TWELVE
FOR years New York had been beckoning to Belinda. All during her time at
the western co-educational college, where she collected an assortment of
somewhat blurred impressions concerning Greek roots, Latin depravity,
and modern literature, and assisted liberally in the education of her
masculine fellow-students, New York, with its opportunities for work and
experience, had lured her on. Fortune she would not need. Daddy had
attended to that in his will, but success, and a knowledge of the world
outside of Indiana, she must have.
This fixed purpose rendered her immune from the sentimental and
matrimonial epidemics that devastate the Junior and Senior ranks in
co-educational institutions. She graduated with honours--and with
scalps. Many Seniors went away sorrowful because of her, the French
professor lapsed into hopeless Gallic gloom, and even the professor of
ancient history was forced into painful recognition of the importance of
the moderns.
When the fortune which had seemed a premise in life's logic shrunk to
proportions barely adequate to support the mother and the younger
children, and became for Belinda herself a vague hypothesis, New York
still hung mystic and alluring upon the horizon; but a public-school
position in the home town offered solid ground upon which to stand,
while yearning toward the apparently unattainable star. The
public-school career was a success. The English classes attained
unheard-of popularity; and, if the number of fights between the big boys
swelled amazingly, at least the frays did not, as a rule, occur upon the
school grounds, and the casualties were no more dire than those
contingent upon football glory. Belinda shone for all. She allowed great
and small to adore her. To her pupils she was just but merciful, and
stoically impartial. The school superintendent, who had weathered the
first throes of widowerhood, and reached the stage where he loved
sitting upon a veranda in the twilight and hearing nocturnes played by
some feminine personality in the parlour, suffered much emotional stress
and strain in the endeavour to decide whether he would rather have
nocturnes and a parlour-chained Belinda or a Belinda beside him in the
twilight and no nocturnes.
Chopin eventually went to the wall; but, just as the superintendent was
developing a taste for major harmonies once more, the unexpected
happened.
Miss Lucilla Ryder came to town.
Miss Ryder was one of the Misses Ryder. Apart from the other Miss Ryder
was incomplete, but she more nearly approximated completion than did
Miss Emmeline Ryder under the same conditions.
Together, the elderly maiden sisters made up a composite entity of
considerable force; and for something like thirty years this entity had
been the mainspring of a flourishing Select School for Young Ladies,
located upon a fashionable side street in the most aristocratic district
of New York. To the school of the Misses Ryder youthful daughters of New
York's first families might be entrusted, with no fear that their
expensive and heaven-allotted bloom would be rubbed off by contact with
the offspring of second-rate families. As Miss Lucilla Ryder explained,
in an effort to soothe the natural fears of a society leader whose
great-grandfather had been a most reputable farmer, the young ladies of
the school were divided into groups, and the flowers of New York's
aristocracy would find in their especial classes only those young ladies
with whom they might reasonably expect to be intimate after their school
life ended and their social career began.
Miss Ryder did not mention this interesting fact to the fond parents
from Idaho and Texas who contemplated placing their daughters in the
school, in order that they might acquire a New York lacquer, and make
acquaintances among the social elect. In fact, Miss Ryder always dangled
before the eyes of these ambitious parents a group of names suggesting a
list of guests for the most exclusive of Newport functions, and dwelt
eloquently upon the privilege of breathing the air which furnished
oxygen to members of these exalted families. Nine times out of ten, mere
repetition of the sacred names hypnotised the prospective patrons, and
they gladly offered up their daughters upon the altar of social
advancement.
An explanation of the class-system would have marred the optimistic
hopes of these fond parents, and the Misses Ryder were too altruistic to
disturb the happiness of fellow mortals. Moreover, it was a
comparatively simple thing to separate day-scholars from boarders
without appearing to make a point of it.
In the handling of such delicate matters, the Misses Ryder displayed a
tact and a _finesse_ which would have made them ornaments to any
diplomatic corps; and, fortunately, the number of the young ladies who
were, of necessity, to be kept in cotton wool was small. The great bulk
of the school's attendance was more or less genially democratic.
School keeping in an aristocratic section of New York is an expensive
matter. It must be done upon a large and daring scale. The Misses Ryder
occupied two brownstone houses. The rents were enormous. The houses were
handsomely furnished. Teachers of ability were a necessity, and such
teachers were expensive. A capable housekeeper and efficient servants
were required to make domestic affairs run smoothly. In consideration of
all this, it was imperative that the Misses Ryder should gather in, each
year, enough boarders to exhaust the room capacity of the two big
houses, and that these boarders should be able and willing to pay high
prices. In order to insure this condition of things, one of the two
principals always made summer pilgrimages to remote places, where
wealthy families possessed of daughters hungering for New York
advantages might reasonably be supposed to exist; and it was in the
course of one of these promoting tours that Miss Lucilla Ryder came to
Lanleyville--drawn there by knowledge of certain large milling interests
in the place.
It was--with apologies to Tennyson--"the miller's daughter" who was
"dear, so dear," to Miss Lucilla, but an unkind fate had decreed that
the miller's daughter should show a pernicious desire for college
education, and that the miller himself should be as wax in his
daughter's hands. Miss Lucilla did not find pupils in Lanleyville, but
she found Belinda. That alone should have repaid her for the trip.
The meeting was accidental, being brought about through the aforesaid
miller's daughter, who had been, for a High-School period, one of
Belinda's adoring slaves.
The Misses Ryder needed a teacher of English; Belinda dreamed of New
York. To make a long story short, Belinda was engaged to teach to the
Ryder pupils such sections and fragments of the English branches as
might be introduced into their heads without resort to surgery. The
salary offered was meagre, but the work would be in New York; so the
contract was made, and Belinda was inclined to look upon Miss Lucilla as
angel of light. Miss Lucilla's opinion of the arrangement was summed up
briefly in her next letter to Miss Emmeline.
"I have secured a teacher of English," she wrote. "The young person is
much too pretty and girlish, but she is willing to accept a very small
salary and is unmistakably a gentlewoman. Her attractions will give her
an influence which we may be able to utilize for the benefit of the
school."
Two months later Belinda sat upon her trunk in a New York hall bedroom
and considered.
The room was the smallest in the Misses Ryder's Select School for Young
Ladies, and before the introduction of the trunk it had been necessary
to evict the one chair which had been a part of the room's furnishing.
The bed was turned up against the wall, where it masqueraded, behind
denim curtains, as a bookcase. When the bed came down there was no
standing room outside of it, and, as Belinda discovered later, getting
into that bed without casualties was a feat calling for fine strategy. A
chiffonier retired as coyly as possible into the embrace of a recessed
doorway; a washstand of Lilliputian dimensions occupied an infinitesimal
fraction of a corner.
The newly arrived instructor of youth studied her domain ruefully from
her vantage point on the trunk; and it might have been observed, had
there been any one on hand to observe it, that the study was interrupted
by occasional attacks of violent winking, also that much winking seemed
to impart a certain odd moisture to the singularly long lashes which
shielded a pair of rather remarkable gray eyes.
As she winked, the young woman of the gray eyes kicked her heels against
the side of the trunk in a fashion that was distinctly undignified, but
appeared to be comforting. There was a note of defiance in the heel
tattoo, an echo of defiance in the heroic attempt at stubbornness to be
noted in a deliciously rounded chin, and a mouth which a beneficent
Providence never mapped out upon stubborn lines, but the eyelashes
gleamed moistly.
If, as has been claimed by worthy persons who have made physiognomy
their study, the eyes reflect one's native spirit, and the mouth
proclaims one's acquired character, Belinda's spiritual and emotional
heritage was in tears, but her mental habit challenged fate to hurl hall
bedrooms _ad libitum_ at her curly head. She had wanted to come to New
York. Well, she was in New York. The immortal Touchstone loomed up
before her with his disgruntled protest: "Now am I in Arden. When I was
at home I was in a better place." Belinda quoted the comment softly.
Then suddenly she stopped winking and smiled. The chin and mouth
incontinently abandoned their stubborn rôle, and showed what they could
do in the line of curves and witchery. Dimples dashed boldly into the
open.
Belinda looked up at the large steel engraving of the Pyramids, which
filled most of the room's available wall space, and the smile expanded
into a laugh. When Belinda laughs, even a city hall bedroom is a
cheerful place.
"_J'y suis; j'y reste_," the young woman announced cheerfully to the
largest Pyramid. It looked stolidly benignant. The sentiment was one it
could readily understand.
There came a tap upon the closed door.
"Come in," called Belinda. The door opened, and a tall young woman
dispassionately surveyed the scene.
"It's a mathematical impossibility," she said gravely, "and that's
expert testimony, for I'm Miss Barnes, the teacher of Mathematics.
Don't apologize. I had this room myself the first year, and I got so
used to it that when I moved to one that is six inches larger each way,
I positively rattled around in it. Miss Ryder sent me to ask you to go
to her sitting-room. I'll come and call as soon as you've unpacked and
settled."
She went away, and Belinda, after dabbing a powderpuff recklessly over
her eyelids and nose, hurried to the private sitting-room, which was the
Principal's sanctum.
Miss Lucilla, slim, erect, well gowned, superior, sat at a handsome desk
between the front windows. Miss Emmeline, a delightful wash drawing of
her strongly etched sister, was talking with two twittering girls at the
opposite end of the room. Miss Emmeline was always detailed to the
sympathetic task. Her slightly vague gentleness was less disconcerting
to sentimental or homesick pupils than Miss Lucilla's somewhat glacial
dignity.
Belinda hesitated upon the threshold. Miss Emmeline bestowed upon her a
detached and impersonal smile. Miss Lucilla summoned her with an
autocratic move of a slender hand, a gesture so imperious that it was
with difficulty the new teacher refrained from an abject salaam.
"Miss Carewe," said the smooth, cool voice, "some of the young ladies
want to go to the theatre to-night. School does not begin until
to-morrow; there are no duties to occupy their time and attention, and
we are, of course, liable to an epidemic of homesickness and hysteria.
Under the circumstances the theatre idea is a good one. It will distract
their minds. I have selected a suitable play, and you will chaperon. The
teachers who have been here before will be needed to assist me with
certain preliminary arrangements to-night. Moreover, you seem to be
cheerful, and at present the young ladies need to be inoculated with
cheerfulness. Be very careful, however, to be dignified first and
cheerful afterward. Remember, however young you may look or feel, you
are a teacher with responsibility upon your shoulders. You must make the
pupils understand that you cannot be overrun, even though you are young.
Unless you take a very wise stand from the first your position will be
difficult and you will be of no value to us. Be reasonable but
uncompromising."
Belinda had been listening attentively. Already she began to hear the
whirring of wheels within wheels in this work of hers, began to
understand that in city private-school life "face" must be preserved as
religiously as in Chinese ceremonial circles; but she recognised in Miss
Lucilla a woman who understood her problem, and she found this
middle-aged spinster, with the keen eyes, the Roman nose, the firm lips,
and the grande-dame manner, interesting.
"How many girls will go?" she asked meekly.
"Twelve."
Belinda gasped. Twelve strange, homesick girls! She wondered if they
would all be as big as the two with Miss Emmeline.
"The theatre is the Garrick. You will start at five minutes of eight."
Miss Lucilla turned to her desk. The interview was finished. No one ever
lingered after Miss Lucilla had said her say.
Belinda went back to her room. On the way she met Miss Barnes.
"Where is the Garrick Theatre?" she inquired.
The teacher of mathematics stopped and looked at her.
"Thirty-fifth Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Walk over and
take the stage or the Sixth Avenue car. Make the girls walk in twos and
the couples close together. Walk behind them. Watch them. They'll stand
it. Don't let them laugh or talk loud or giggle like idiots. I suppose
you may as well get broken in first as last."
The voice and manner were brusque, but the eyes had a kindly gleam, and
Belinda was devoutly thankful for the information so curtly given.
"Do they ever cry in the street cars?" she asked with an air of grim
foreboding.
Miss Barnes's eyes relented still further.
"No, but they flirt in the street cars."
"Not really." Belinda's tone expressed incredulous disgust.
"Really. By the time you've chaperoned miscellaneous specimens of the
up-to-date young person for a few months, Miss Carewe, you'll not be
surprised at any breach of good taste. The girls carry on handkerchief
flirtations with strangers from the windows."
"Girls from respectable families?"
"Girls from excellent families. Of course, there are numbers of
well-bred girls who behave correctly; and there's nothing actually bad
about the ones who behave badly. They are merely lacking in good taste
and overcharged with animal spirits or sentimentality. I'm always
surprised that they don't get into all sorts of disgraceful scrapes, but
they seldom do. We have to be eternally vigilant, though."
"But handkerchief flirtation is so unspeakably common," said Belinda
emphatically--then, with a twinkle, "and such a desecration of a really
fine art."
Miss Barnes shook her head.
"The Misses Ryder haven't any sense of humour," she warned; "you'd
better let your conversation be yea, yea, and nay, nay"--but she smiled.
At five minutes to eight the Youngest Teacher stood in the lower hall,
surrounded by schoolgirls of assorted sizes and shapes, and prayerfully
hoping that she didn't look as foolish as she felt.
One of the older teachers, commissioned by Miss Ryder, had come down to
see the expedition fairly started. She was a plump, sleek woman with an
automatic smile and a pneumatic manner.
"You will all give your car fares to Miss Carewe, young ladies," she
purred. "You have your rubbers? That's right. The pavements are damp.
Miss Bowers and Miss Somerville, you may lead. Fall in closely, in
couples, and be very careful not under any circumstances to become
separated from the chaperon. She will report any annoyance you may cause
her. I hope you will have a delightful evening."
The door closed upon her unnatural amiability. Six couples swung into
the street, with Belinda at their heels. Out of the grim, inclosing
walls, with the cool, moist air in their faces, the lights reflected
gayly in the glistening pavements, the cabs and carriages dashing by,
the mystery and fascination of a great city clinging around them, and a
matinée idol beckoning them, the girls began to find life more cheerful.
Even fat, babyish little Kittie Dayton, whose face was swollen and
blotted almost beyond human semblance by six hours of intermittent
weeping, stopped blowing her nose long enough to squeal delightedly:
"Oh-e-e! The man kissed the lady in that cab."
It was with difficulty that Belinda stopped a stampede in the direction
of the hansom. This was seeing New York. The melancholy atmosphere of
the school was forgotten.
They giggled in the car. It worried Belinda. Later she learned to bow to
the inevitable. The young man who gave Amelia Bowers his seat was
sociably inclined; but, on the whole, Amelia behaved very well, though
she admitted, later, that she thought he had "most romantic eyes, and a
perfectly elegant waistcoat."
Belinda squirmed on the car. Arrived at the theatre she squirmed still
more. The lobby was well filled. It was almost time for the curtain. She
hated leading her line down the middle aisle to the fourth row; she
hated the smiles and comment that followed them; she loathed being made
conspicuous--and her sentiments were not modified, as she followed the
last of the girls through the door, by hearing the manager say jocularly
to the doorkeeper:
"My eye! and who's chaperoning the pretty chaperon?"
There was a balk, a tangle, when the fourth row was reached. The
acquaintances between most of the girls dated from the morning of that
day, but already each of the group had strong convictions in regard to
the girls beside whom she chose to sit, and hours of discussion and
debate could not have solved the problem to the satisfaction of all
concerned.
Belinda firmly hustled the protestants into the seats without regard to
prejudices, and sat down in the end chair exhausted and rebellious. She
detested the Young Person, individually and collectively. She resented
being bear leader. She thought longingly of the Lanleyville High School
and the home friends, and the fact that New York seethed round the
theatre in which she sat afforded her no consolation. She was profoundly
indifferent to the popular actor before whom her charges became as dumb,
adoring worshippers. In a little while she would have to lead her flock
of geese home, and she wished she dared lose them and run away. She felt
a sudden sympathy for Kittie Dayton, whose pudgy, swollen face, though
now radiant, looked like an unfinished biscuit. Belinda, too, was
homesick--deeply, darkly, dismally homesick. Even her sense of humour
was swamped. June and the end of her contract loomed but vaguely beyond
a foggy waste of months.
"Isn't he just too perfectly sweet, Miss Carewe?" gurgled Amelia Bowers
in her ear.
Belinda was non-committal.
"Did you ever meet him on the street?"
Belinda had never had that rapture.
"Well, one might, you know," said Amelia hopefully. "Alice Ransom
plumped right into Faversham, one day, when she was in New York, and he
took off his hat to her and said, 'Beg pardon.' She said she felt
perfectly faint. His voice sounded just like it does on the stage, and
he had the most fascinating eyes and the sweetest bulldog. Alice said it
seemed like Fate, running right into him that way, the first time she
went out alone. She walked down Fifth Avenue at that same time every day
for a week, but she never met him again."
The star and his leading lady fell into each other's arms for the final
curtain and later were brought out to bow their amiable
acknowledgements, with results disastrous to the seams of Amelia's white
gloves.
The crowd rustled to its feet, preened itself, and took lagging flight
toward the street. Belinda marshalled her flock and joined the exodus.
She would be glad to reach the hall bedroom and shut its door upon a
world that was too much with her. She coveted the stolid, tranquil
society of the Pyramids. They would watch her cry with the same
impenetrable indifference with which they would watch her laugh, but
presumably the Garrick Theatre crowd would be impressed if she should
burst into floods of tears.
Drearily she followed the six couples of chattering girls who dropped
adjectives and exclamations as they went, and who were quite unable to
keep in line, according to the prescribed formula, in the midst of the
jostling, hurrying crowd; but Belinda was little concerned by that. As
a matter of fact, her thoughts were self-centred. This was her first
view of a New York crowd, but she received no impression save that men
and women alike looked tired and dissatisfied, though surely they were
not all elected to spend the next nine months in a boarding-school.
The middle aisle emptied her into the lobby; and as she stood there,
vaguely conscious that something was incumbent upon her, her wandering
glance fell upon a young man across the lobby. Belinda gasped, flushed.
The young man's eyes met hers from where he was wedged against the wall.
His face, too, lighted into incredulous joy. It was a good-looking face,
a gay, boyish face, but browned to a hue that contrasted oddly with the
city-bleached skins around him. Perhaps that was why he had attracted
attention, and why several heads turned to discover the cause of the
sudden illumination. When the owners of the heads saw Belinda they
understood and smiled benignantly. All the world loves a lover.
Belinda was utterly unconscious of the glances, unconscious of anything
save that the gods were good.
Here was Jack--Jack, of all men, dropped into the midst of her gloom.
Hilarious memories and cheerful anticipations swarmed into her mind.
Jack stood for home, old days, old larks, old irresponsibility. New
York disappeared from the map. The Select School for Young Ladies
ceased to exist. The young ladies themselves were blotted out.
Beaming, dimpling, Belinda squeezed a way across the outgoing current.
Grinning, radiant, Jack Wendell forced an opening for his square
shoulders.
They met in the whirlpool, and he cleverly hauled her into a high and
dry corner.
"Belinda!"
"Jack!"
Everyone near them smiled sympathetically. Belinda's enthusiasm is often
misleading, and on this occasion she was unreservedly enthusiastic.
"Is the Massachusetts in?"
"Docked yesterday."
"And you are going to stay?"
"Several weeks--and you?"
"All winter."
Belinda's delight approached effervescence. Jack's face was a luminous
harvest moon. Both were oblivious to the fact that he was still holding
her hand.
They talked breathlessly in laughter-punctuated gusts. They went back to
the beginning of things and rapidly worked down past the Deluge which
separated them, and the subsequent wanderings. They brought their life
histories almost up to date, and then, suddenly, Miss Lucilla Ryder
entered Belinda's tale.
"Miss Lucilla Ryder!"
As she spoke the name she underwent a sudden transformation. Her smiles
and dimples vanished, her face lengthened miraculously, her eyes stared
fixedly at some awesome vision.
Lieutenant Wendell cast an alarmed look over his shoulder. The glance
encountered a blank wall and returned to Belinda's face.
"For Heaven's sake, what is it?" he asked.
"The girls!" said Belinda in a whisper.
Once more the Lieutenant looked over his shoulder.
"Where?" he inquired, eyeing her anxiously.
"I--don't--know," faltered Belinda.
"Good Heavens, Belinda," protested the Lieutenant. "Wake up. What's the
matter? Are you ill?"
Her look and manner distressed him. This was some sort of an attack, and
he didn't understand. He didn't know what ought to be done.
Belinda had clutched his coat sleeve. He patted her hand encouragingly.
"There, there, never mind," he murmured soothingly.
Never mind, indeed! Belinda waxed tremblingly wroth.
"I'm in a cold sweat. They've gone home alone. Oh, Jack, what shall I
do? I don't dare to meet Miss Ryder. She'll send me away to-morrow. It's
awful!"
Still holding him by the coat sleeve, she was pulling him toward the
door. The lobby was almost empty. The few stragglers were eyeing the
tableau curiously.
Masculine common-sense asserted itself. The Lieutenant drew Belinda's
hand through his arm and stopped her under the glare of the electric
light.
"Don't be an idiot," he said brusquely. "Who is Miss Ryder? Who are the
girls?"
The bullying stirred the young woman to intelligence.
"She's principal of the school. I'm teaching there. I brought twelve
pupils to the theatre."
Amazement, comprehension, sympathy chased each other across the man's
face and were swallowed by wild mirth, but Belinda's eyes filled with
tears, and his mirth evaporated.
"Never mind. Buck up, little girl. We'll fix it some way. We'll get a
cab. We'll kill a horse. We'll get there before they can. Maybe they
won't tell."
"Oh, yes, they will. If they were only boys--but girls will." Still
Belinda revived slightly under the suggestion.
"Come on. We must hustle."
He hurried her to the door. Alert, energetic, self-confident, he had
taken command of affairs. Belinda's spirits soared. After all, she
reflected, there's something about a man. He has his moments.
It was raining. The crowd had scattered, the carriages had gone. As
Lieutenant Wendell raised an umbrella and looked sharply around for a
cab Belinda's eyes caught sight of a row of dripping umbrellas ranged
along the curb. Below the umbrellas were carefully lifted petticoats.
She counted the umbrellas. There were twelve.
"Jack, look!"
He looked. Belinda darted forward.
The umbrellas were lifted and disclosed twelve girlish faces. On each
face was a wide-spreading, comprehending, maddening grin, but not a girl
spoke.
Belinda's cheeks were crimson, but she pulled herself together
heroically.
"Good night, Mr. Wendell. Come, girls."
They dropped into line, still grinning.
Jack stepped to Belinda's side for a moment.
"Cheer up. They look like a good sort--but if there is any trouble let
me know," he said softly.
The teacher and her charges made their way silently toward the car. No
one mentioned the lieutenant, and Belinda volunteered no explanation or
excuse. She would keep at least a shred of dignity.
Arrived at the school Belinda saw the girls deposited in their
respective rooms, then she pulled down her folding bed, crept into it,
and cried into her pillow. If the girls should tell--and they would--and
even if they didn't, how could she ever have any authority over them?
"Be very careful not under any circumstances to become separated from
the chaperon." Miss Spogg's soft voice purred it into her ear.
"Remember, however young you may look or feel, you are a teacher with
responsibility upon your shoulders. Unless you take a very wise stand
from the first you will be of no value to us." Miss Lucilla's voice now
smote the ears of memory.
If the girls should tell----
"I've changed my mind about girls," Belinda announced to Lieutenant
Wendell, on her free evening, a week later. "They are much nicer than
boys, and quite as generous."