TO THE RESCUE.
The next morning proved a hard one for Peggy; the rhetoric lesson was
the first that must be recited. She had studied it hard, but somehow the
rules seemed to make little impression. Whenever she tried to fix them
in her mind, there came between her and the page two melancholy blue
eyes, and she seemed to hear a voice of singular quality, a voice with a
thrill in it, saying, "Could'st love a Goat, Innocent?"
So she was not as well prepared as she should have been when she went
into the class; and on meeting Miss Pugsley's cold greenish brown eye,
what she did know seemed to evaporate from the top of her head, leaving
a total blank. She stumbled and floundered; she did not know what an
antecedent was, and she could not remember ever to have heard of a
reciprocal pronoun.
"Pray, Miss Montfort, were you asleep or awake when you studied this
lesson?" inquired Miss Pugsley, with acrid calm.
"I don't know!" replied Peggy, now thoroughly bewildered.
"Well, if you were asleep, let me recommend you to try it again when you
wake up; or if you were awake, perhaps you might do it better in your
sleep."
Peggy flushed scarlet, and the ready tears sprang into her eyes; but she
forced them back, bit her lip, and tried not to feel the eyes of the
whole class bent on her in amused astonishment. Miss Pugsley seemed to
take positive pleasure in her ignorance and embarrassment. She put one
question after another, each more ingeniously contrived than the
last--or so it seemed--to show what Peggy did not know. At last, in
self-defence, the poor child took refuge in one simple and invariable
answer: "I don't know!" So confused was she that these words were the
only ones she could utter, even when she knew the correct answer, or
would have done so if she could have collected her wits. By the end of
the hour, Peggy was entirely convinced that she was the dunce and butt
of the school; that she knew nothing, and never would know anything.
It seemed a cruel stroke of fate that this terrible period should be
followed by that of general history, for Peggy detested history, as some
of my readers already know. She went into the next class-room with an
aching head, and a heart throbbing with a sense of utter worthlessness
in herself, and of bitter cruelty in others. She did not even look up at
the teacher, but kept her eyes fixed on her desk, and answered the few
questions that meant anything to her, sullenly and unwillingly. She did
try at first to follow the lesson, but her head ached so, the words
seemed to sing themselves into mere nonsense, and she soon gave up the
attempt; the more so as this teacher, who had been observing her pretty
closely, for some reason or other asked her very few questions. At last,
however, the blow fell.
"Where did Philip of Macedon come from, Miss Montfort?"
"I don't know," said Peggy.
"Oh, I think you do," said Miss Cortlandt, with a pleasant smile, and
checking, with a warning glance, the rising giggle.
"Try again, Miss Montfort. Philip the Great, Philip of Macedon,--where
did he come from? Surely you can tell me!"
"I don't know," said Peggy, doggedly; and at the moment she actually did
not.
"My dear child," said the teacher, "did you ever hear what was the
colour of Washington's gray mare?"
"No, ma'am," said Peggy.
"Well, what was it?"
"I don't know."
Emily Cortlandt had graduated from college the year before. She laid
down her pencil, and looked very kindly at the distracted girl.
"I think you are not feeling well, Miss Montfort," she said. "Does your
head ache?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Peggy. She could not have said another word; her
whole strength was needed to keep back the flood of tears that was
rising, rising.
"You need not stay through the lesson," Miss Cortlandt went on, and the
sympathy in her voice only brought the flood higher and nearer.
"You can make up the lesson to me some other time. Now, you would better
go and lie down for a little, and then take a turn in the fresh air.
Miss Bangs, what was the date of Philip's first invasion?"
Peggy never knew how she got out of the class-room. She longed to give
at least a grateful look at the kind soul who had saved her, but her
eyes were already swimming in tears. She fled along the corridor,
sobbing hysterically, blinded with tears, conscious of only one thing,
the desperate resolve to get to her room, before she broke down
altogether. Flying thus around a corner, she rushed headlong into a
group of girls who were gathered around something, she could not tell
what. So violent was the shock that Peggy reeled and struck her head
sharply against the wall. This brought her to herself. She caught back
the sob on her lips, and dashed the tears from her eyes before any one
saw them,--or so she hoped; then she looked to see what was going on.
Next moment she had forgotten that there were such things as tears in
the world.
There were six or eight girls in the group, mostly sophomores, though a
few were freshmen. They were looking down at something--somebody--crouching
on the floor against the wall, and their laughter, checked for an instant
by Peggy's onset, broke out afresh. "Here's Peggy Montfort, just in time
to see the fun. Look, Miss Montfort, and see the fashions! Straight from
Paris, and the very last thing!"
The speaker was Blanche Haight, a tall sophomore with bleached hair, and
eyes set too near together. She was considered a wit, and every time she
spoke the other girls giggled and screamed.
The person crouching on the floor was Lobelia Parkins. Her head was
pressed against the wall, her face hidden in her hands; misery and
terror were in every line of her poor little shrinking figure, but this
only gave added delight to her tormentors.
"Look, ladies, at the new sleeve!" cried Miss Haight, lifting the skinny
arm, from which the blue poplin sleeve hung in an awkward fashion. "Did
you ever see anything so exquisite? Look at the fringe, will you, and
the pattern? I'm going to get Miss Russell to put her up on exhibition,
so the whole school can have the benefit; it's a shame to keep it to
ourselves!"
"He! he! he!" went all the girls. "Blanche, you are too funny for
anything!"
"Where did your mother get it?" asked another; and this, as Peggy saw
with a shock, was pretty Rose Barclay. "Did the ragman bring it around,
or did she pick it up in the gutter? Say, Miss Parkins, I wish you'd
tell us, 'cause we all want to know."
"Yes, of course we want to know!" cried Miss Haight. "I'm going to write
this very night, to see if Mumma can't get me one like it. I never shall
be happy till I--"
That sentence never was finished. The speaker found her own arm seized
in a grip of iron, which forced her to drop the poor little arm in the
blue sleeve. She was forced back against the wall, and found herself
confronted by a pair of blue eyes blazing with righteous wrath.
"How dare you?" cried Peggy Montfort, in a voice that quivered with
rage. "You mean, cowardly brute, how dare you? Touch her again, and I'll
choke the words down your throat!"
Blanche Haight gasped for a moment; indeed, the whole group was cowed by
this sudden vision of strength and fury. But she recovered herself in a
moment.
"Well, indeed!" she said. "I should like to know what this means, Miss
Montfort? I should like to know who gave you authority to choke people,
and abuse them, and call them names?"
"You'll find out what it means!" said Peggy, waiving the second
question, and replying to the first. "If you touch that child again, or
so much as speak to her, I'll choke you."
"Girls, do you hear this?" cried Blanche Haight. "Are you going to
stand by, and let this girl ride over us?"
"Shame!" cried the girls. "Bully!"
"Bully!" cried Peggy, dropping her hold of Miss Haight, and turning to
face the others. "You call me a bully, and you yourselves, eight great
grown girls, standing around to torment and torture this poor helpless
child? Shame on you! Shame on you all, every one! I'm ashamed to be in
the same school with you. I--" (Here, I am sorry to say, Peggy forgot
that she was a young lady, forgot everything save that she was the
daughter of hot-blooded James Montfort.) "I could whip the whole lot of
you, and I'll do it if you dare to say 'Boo!' but you don't!"
It was a fact that no one did say "Boo!" There was a pause, Peggy
standing with folded arms before the shrinking child, her whole figure
dilated with passion, till she seemed to tower above the rest, who for
their part cowered before her.
Rose Barclay was the first to speak.
"We are very fortunate to find a leader for the freshman class," she
said, spitefully, "and such a leader! Miss Montfort is too high-toned
to help a classmate with her lesson, but not too high-toned to talk like
a Bowery rowdy. Come, along, girls! I for one don't care to listen to
any more such refined, elegant talk!"
"Yes, you'd better go along!" said Peggy, the Valkyr, briefly.
"Pray, may I ask," said Blanche Haight, with a bitter sneer, "are you
monitor of this corridor?"
"No," said a voice behind her; "but I am."
A girl had come quietly up the stairs, and was now standing close beside
the excited group, none of whom had seen or heard her,--a tall girl,
with red-gold hair, dressed as if she had just come from a journey.
"I am the monitor of this corridor," she repeated. "Please go to your
rooms, or I shall be obliged to report you."
The girls shrunk together, whispering, the freshmen questioning the
sophomores.
"Who is it? Who is it?"
"Hush! It's the junior president. Come along!"
The group melted away; another moment, and all were gone save Peggy, who
was now on the floor, with her arms around the little miserable
creature, who still shrank close against the wall, as if her life
depended on the contact.
"There, dear!" she cried. "They are gone. Come! Don't huddle up so, you
poor little thing. Those brutes are gone, and there's nobody here but
me, Peggy, and--" she glanced up at the tall girl. "Oh! won't you help
me?" she cried. "I think--she doesn't seem to hear what I am saying. Oh,
is she dead?"
"No," said the monitor. "I think she has fainted, though, poor little
soul! We must carry her to her room. Do you know where it is? I have
only just come back, and don't know where the freshmen are."
"No, I don't know, but I'll take her to my room; I'm in No. 18. Oh, I
can carry her alone; she's all skin and bone; she doesn't weigh
anything."
The little figure in the staring poplin gown hung quite limp, as Peggy
lifted it. "You'd better let me help," said the tall girl, kindly. "We
can make her more comfortable; so!"
Together they carried her to Peggy's room, and laid her on the bed. It
was really more fright and distress than actual fainting, for she soon
opened her eyes, and looked eagerly at Peggy, but closed them again with
a faint cry, at sight of the stranger.
"You needn't be afraid of her!" cried Peggy, eagerly. "She isn't one of
them; she's none of that horrid crowd. I don't know who you are," she
said, "but I'm ever and ever and ever so much obliged to you. I don't
know whether you heard what they were saying."
And she poured out an indignant account of the cruelty she had witnessed
and put a stop to. The stranger's eyes were stern enough, as she
listened. "I heard only the end of it," she said, briefly, "but where I
see Blanche Haight, I am never surprised at anything cruel or cowardly.
I am very glad to know you; it was a mercy that you happened to come
along just then. I hope we shall be friends, Miss--is it Miss
Montfort?"
"Oh, that I will!" cried Peggy, responding with all her warm heart to
the sweet smile and the lovely look in the clear blue eyes. "Oh, I
should like to ever so much; but I don't know your name, do I?"
The stranger smiled again. "They call me the Snowy Owl," she said, "but
my name is Gertrude Merryweather."