PADDY WHEEL-ABOUT.
The next day there was a whisper through the school that Kitty Malone
was about to do public penance. She had already made more or less
sensation in that part of the school where she worked. In her own class
the girls, as has already been stated, adored her; but the other girls
also looked at her with interest. They admired her dress, her free,
careless gait, her upright, erect figure, and the bright, happy glance
in her eyes. They all thought her charming, and the expression of her
face was often so comical, the shrug of her shoulders so ludicrous, that
at a glance she set the girls tittering.
On this special occasion she sat down between her favorite Mary Davies
and Agnes Moore, and whispered to the former:
"Ah, then, darling, it is not your place I'll be taking to-day; sure my
head is bothered entirely. But I have got all kinds of nice things about
me. Do you know that I sat up late last night putting a pocket in the
left side of my dress as well as the right, so now the girl on each side
of me can have as many chocolates as she has a fancy for? You dive in
your hand whenever you feel the least bit inclined for a sweetie, Agnes;
and you do the same, Mary Davies; and, Mary, you might pass one on now
and then to that poor, little, thin Katie Trafford at the other end of
the class."
It was certainly impossible for a girl like Kitty Malone not to be
popular; and the other girls valued her, and thought themselves highly
privileged to be in the same class with her, dunce as she was.
Kitty had learned her lessons a little better, but the thought of the
public confessions which she was about to make rested heavy on her soul.
It made her restless; and her lessons, although they had been better
prepared, gained her no more marks than on the previous day.
"I wonder how I ought to do it," she whispered more than once to Agnes
Moore.
"To do what?" asked Agnes, who was a very earnest little student, and
whose dream was that she might get a remove at the end of the term.
"About what, Kitty? I wish you would not interrupt me."
"Oh, bother it, dear. Have a chocolate, won't you? What are your lessons
compared to my perplexities? What ought I to say? Ought I to drop a
courtesy or go on my knees? There was an old romance which I found in
the garret at home; and when the heroine did wrong she always dropped
upon her knees and folded her hands, and raised her eyes toward
heaven--is that the way I ought to do it?"
"Don't, don't, Kitty; you'll make me laugh, and then I'll be sent down.
Please, don't talk to me any more."
Kitty turned her attention to Mary Davies.
"Would you, Mary, go on one knee or on two? If you dip your hand down to
the very bottom of my pocket, you'll find some caramels--some people
like them better than chocolate creams."
"You must not talk to me any more or I'll get into disgrace," whispered
Mary in a low, frightened voice. "Look, Miss Worrick has come into the
room. Now do open your history book, there's a dear girl."
Kitty bent her curly head over her book. She was really interested in
the cruel fate of the martyr-king, but at that moment she saw nothing
but the picture she was conjuring up each moment before her excited
imagination--the tall girl asking pardon of the little teacher. Was the
girl to go on her knees?
"It really would be better," thought Kitty. "I'd be lower than her then.
It does seem ridiculous that the big should ask pardon of the little,
and--Oh, Miss Worrick, I beg your pardon; were you speaking to me?"
"I was, Kitty. Stand up; I am just going to lecture."
The history lesson began. Kitty did no better than yesterday. It came to
an end. The mathematical teacher took her class, and then the great bell
was rung for recess. Just at the moment when its last note echoed
through the vast school Miss Worrick came a step forward into the room,
and held up her hand to arrest the movement of the classes. She looked
at Kitty with an expectant expression. Kitty returned her gaze, and said
nothing. Kitty Malone felt glued to her seat. For a moment every nerve
seemed paralyzed, her face became crimson, her eyes filled with ready
tears, she looked down, the great tears splashed upon the desk before
her. At that instant she encountered the vindictive and delighted
glance of Alice Denvers.
Kitty had confided all her trouble to Alice on the previous night, and
Alice at the time had pretended to give a little sympathy; but where was
her sympathy now?
"I hate her," thought the Irish girl. "No one else would be glad to see
me so miserable."
"You have something to say to me, have you not, Miss Malone?" said Miss
Worrick in her stiff, precise voice.
Kitty staggered to her feet.
"I don't want to say it a bit," she grumbled.
"Come forward, my dear; come forward."
Kitty left the protection of her desk, and staggered across the room.
Miss Worrick had mounted a little platform, all the other teachers stood
waiting, and the girls waited also. Kitty looked round, the eyes in each
face seemed multiplied fourfold--the room seemed to be all eyes. She
longed for the mountains, for her father, for Laurie, for the old home.
She hated the school, she hated England. Why was she to be publicly
disgraced?
"Oh, it is very wrong indeed to ask me to do it," she cried. Then the
following words rushed out: "Miss Worrick, I am sorry I disobeyed you
yesterday, and I'll stay in class to-day. Yes, I will stay; but I hate
every one of you, and I hate England, and I wish I was back again in
dear Old Ireland. Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear! Why was I ever sent into
this horrid, cold, freezing land? Oh, my heart is broken! my heart is
broken!"
Kitty's sobs were distinctly heard across the great schoolroom. She
returned to her seat. Miss Worrick with a wave of her hand dismissed the
rest of the girls. Kitty bent her head low down upon the desk before
her, and sobbed louder and louder. At last she felt a hand resting
lightly on her shoulder.
"I know I did it dreadfully, Miss Worrick," she said; "but it was so
bad. Why did you make me, why did you make me?"
"There, Kitty, it is over now, and you will never disobey your teacher
again as long as you live," said a kind voice, and Kitty raised her eyes
to see, not the face of Miss Worrick, but that of the head-mistress.
"Oh, Miss Sherrard, how could you make me do it?" she sobbed. "It wasn't
in me. None of the Malones could beg anybody's pardon, and I couldn't go
on my knees when the moment came because they felt stiff, they had no
joints in them. I could not do it properly; no, I could not."
"You did it, dear, but not very well. You did it, however, and you have
learned your lesson. Now come with me into my private sitting-room. You
and I will have lunch together, and I will excuse you from any more
lessons to-day."
Kitty Malone never forgot that next hour. Miss Sherrard was an ideal
head-mistress. She had the keenest sympathy with girls. In her long
experience she had met girls of every shade of character, the bold, the
ambitious, the timorous, the idle, the frivolous, the noble, the
earnest. She knew all about the Christian girl as well as the pagan
girl; all about the girl who had a terrible battle with her own evil pro
pensities, and the girl whose nature was so amiable, so gentle, so
sweet, that life would be comparatively easy for her. But although she
had been head-mistress of the great Middleton School now for several
years, she had never before met quite such an extraordinary specimen as
Kitty Malone. Where, however, others would see nothing but a spirit of
frivolity, a love of admiration, dress, pleasure, in Kitty, Miss
Sherrard peeped below the surface and discovered some really noble
qualities. She determined to be very gentle to this wild, willful
girl--to take her, in short, as she was.
"Oh, I wonder you care to speak to me," said Kitty, when her sobs having
ceased, she stood looking half-repentant, half-rebellious in Miss
Sherrard's private room.
"You are not to be the subject of our conversation at all for the
present, Kitty," said Miss Sherrard. "Lunch is ready, and you must be
hungry. Would you like to go into my room--it is just next to this--and
wash your hands and brush out your hair?"
Kitty looked at Miss Sherrard's small and beautifully-kept hands. She
was fastidious to a remarkable degree about her personal appearance.
"I dare say my hair is somewhat untidy," she said. "I might as well take
a squint at myself in the glass. I never like to look ugly. Is my nose
very red, Miss Sherrard?"
"Never mind about your appearance," said Miss Sherrard, who could not
help feeling slightly annoyed at what she considered such a very
irrelevant remark.
"I expect I am a fright," said Kitty standing up and talking half to
herself and half for the benefit of the head-mistress. "Crying always
spoils me. Now, I knew a girl at home, and the more she cried the
prettier she got. She used to let her tears roil down her cheeks in
great drops, and never attempted to wipe them away, and her nose never
got red, and her eyes only got bigger and quite dewy. Now, as to me when
I cry, my nose----"
"Kitty, will you please remember that I am waiting for lunch,"
interrupted Miss Sherrard.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, ma'am," answered Kitty. She ran into the next
room, examined herself critically in the glass, arranged her hair,
dipped her hands into hot water, and came back looking spruce, bright,
pretty, and once more restored to the highest good-humor.
"I said yesterday that I would love you, ma'am," she said, as she seated
herself at the other side of the appetizing board. "Oh! what a dear
little pie! I wonder is it pigeon pie"
"No, it is lamb pie," answered Miss Sherrard. "Will you help yourself?"
Kitty cut herself a generous slice.
"I like all sorts of good things," she said. "I am sure I was meant to
do nothing in life but dress well, and look pretty, and have the nicest
food to eat, and----"
"How dare you?" interrupted Miss Sherrard. Her words coming firm and
strong, the expression on her kind face arrested the idle girl's silly
remarks.
"What do you mean?" asked Kitty.
"I mean this, Miss Malone, that you are a girl with a considerable
amount of ability----"
"Oh, now that I have not got."
"With a considerable amount of ability," continued Miss Sherrard, "and
with a great many talents."
"Talents! I thought talents meant genius. Now, I have always and always
been told that I was a dunce of the dunces. It's not joking me you are,
is it, Miss Sherrard?"
"No, Kitty; I am in very sober earnest. You have been sent to me to make
something of you."
"Well, my dear woman, I am afraid you won't make much. The fact is, I am
wild through and through. I come of a wild stock. I wish you could see
us at home, and Laurie, and----"
"You must tell me about your home afterward," said Miss Sherrard. "But
now I have something to say about yourself."
As she spoke, Miss Sherrard drew her cup of coffee to the side of the
table, leaned back, and looked fixedly into the bright and lovely face
of the girl who sat opposite her.
"You have read your Bible, have you not?" she said.
"My Bible!" cried Kitty. "Yes; I read it every day."
"I am glad to hear that."
"Why, you don't suppose we are a lot of heathens at Castle Malone, do
you, Miss Sherrard? Father has prayers every morning, and we all troop
in, every one of us, into the big hall. Oh, I wish you could see the
hall, and the pictures of my ancestors, and----"
"Afterward you shall tell me about them," interrupted Miss Sherrard. "So
you do read your Bible every day. Then I dare say you happen to know
the beautiful story, or rather parable, spoken by Christ himself about
the talents?"
"Yes, I love that story; only I don't think it applies specially to me,
for I have not got any."
"Have not you? Perhaps I can find that you have."
Kitty gazed at her mistress very earnestly.
"What is it I am good in?" she asked after a pause. "Is it my English?
Bless you, they tell me it's awfully Irish."
"It certainly is, Kitty."
"Then, I don't know any music, although I can sing and whistle. Oh, I
can whistle anything. There's not an air that Laurie plays (it's he that
has the genius for music, bless the boy)--but there's not an air he
plays that I can't whistle it right up and down, and with variations
too."
"Yes, my dear, yes; but I was not thinking of this special talent. Now,
let me tell you something that you have got."
"What? Please speak."
"You have plenty of money."
"I never thought that was a talent," cried Kitty.
"I should think it a very great and responsible talent. You have been
given that money to do something for God. He wants you to use it for
Him. Then, also, you have a very bright, attractive, loving manner."
"Oh, I feel every word I say. It's not manner," said Kitty. "You don't
suppose I'm a hypocrite, do you?"
"No, I think on the contrary you are very sincere. We will now admit
that you have got two talents; you have got money and you have got a
pleasant manner. I think also that you have got a third, and I may be
able to prove to you that you have got a fourth."
"Dear me, this is most entertaining!" exclaimed Kitty. "So I have really
got two talents, and you think I have more. What is the third?"
"I don't wish to make you vain; but you have--yes, I must tell you--a
remarkably pretty face."
"Ah, now, what a darling you are! I always thought you were sweet. What
part of me do you admire most, the eyes or the mouth? I have the real
Irish eyes I know--gentian-blue, yes, that's the color--and my
eyelashes--aren't they long?"
"We need not discuss your beauty piece by piece," said Miss Sherrard.
"You are pretty, and I am willing to admit it. Now, a bright face like
yours, with an attractive manner, is a gift. Then, besides, you
have--you will be astonished when I say this--lots of becoming dress,
which adds to the charm of your appearance. Kitty, if you were all you
might be--if you would use that money which God has given you, that
beauty which God has given you, that attractive manner which God has
given you, all for His service--why, you could do a great deal in the
world. You could make it a better place, a brighter place, a happier
place. Now, my dear child, your father has trusted you to me. He wrote
to me a great deal about you before you came to Middleton School----"
"Dear old dad!" cried Kitty.
"He loves you with all his heart."
"I should think so, the darling blessed man--may the saints preserve
him!"
"As your father feels so strongly about you, and as I promised him to
do what I could for his child, will you help me, Kitty? Will you
remember that you are equipped for the battle of life much more bravely,
much more strongly than most of the other girls in Middleton School? Use
your beauty for Him, dear; use your attractive manner for Him."
"You make me feel very solemn," said Kitty. She rose. "I will try and
think about it," she said. "I wish I was not quite such a giddypate; but
I'll try and think about it."
Miss Sherrard kissed her.
"And now I want you to do something more," she said. "You won't be able
to be a better girl than you were in the past if you don't pray to God
to help you; and when you pray, Kitty, ask Him to teach you to restrain
your feelings a little, not to let them all rush to the surface, to keep
a little back. Thus you will gain strength of character, and--and be all
the better for it, my child."
"You are very good to me," said Kitty. "I don't mind what I do for those
I love. I suppose now you would wish me to learn my lessons perfectly
every day?"
"I certainly should."
"And to--to turn poor little Agnes Moore from the head of her class?"
"Well, Kitty, I cannot say anything about that. II you do better work
than Agnes Moore you will get to the head of the class and she will go
down; but I doubt your being able to do so, for Agnes is a very clever
and a very diligent little pupil. But I want you, dear, soon to get out
of that class, for it is a great deal too young for you. I want you to
be with girls of your own age. We are yet one month to the end of the
term. By the end of term I want to be able to tell you that you have got
a remove. And now, dear, good-by. Remember, I shall watch you, and--yes,
I shall pray for you."
"You are very good to me," repeated Kitty; and she walked out of Miss
Sherrard's presence with her head lowered, and a mist before her eyes.
For the next few days Kitty was strangely thoughtful. She did not speak
nearly so much as usual, she felt inclined to go away by herself, and
she was much puzzled about her talents. Miss Sherrard's words had made
quite a deep impression. She learned her lessons with care, and had
every chance, so her teachers told her, of a remove at the end of term.
Even Alice found less to say against her. Kitty began to look on her
school life as something roseate and delightful; but all these things
were to come to a speedy end.
On a certain afternoon she got home to find Alice out and Mrs. Denvers
seated in the drawing-room with a great basket of mending before her.
"Oh, what a lot of work! Would you like me to help you?" said Kitty.
"Very much, dear; but what kept you so late? Oh, here is a letter for
you."
"A letter!" cried Kitty eagerly. "Oh, it is from Laurie. Hurrah!
hurrah!"
She forgot all about her offer to help Mrs. Denvers with her darning,
tossed the letter in the air two or three times, and then sank down on
the nearest ottoman to read it. These were the words on which her eyes
rested:
"DEAR OLD KITTERKINS: I have got into the greatest bother of a mess that
ever assailed a poor gossoon, and if you can't help me, old girleen,
well, I shall be done brown, as the saying is. The whole matter concerns
Paddy Wheel-about. The poor creature has been getting queerer and
queerer lately, and father has been ever so much worried about him. I
didn't know a word of this, mind you, at the time, but learnt it
afterwards; and it makes my bit of a frolic all the blacker, I can tell
you. Father got Dr. Milligan to go and see Paddy in his cabin at the top
of Sleeve Nohr, and the doctor said that the poor old boy was going off
his head as fast as he could, and we must be careful not to give him any
shock. Well, but to come to my part of it. You know that coat of his,
and what diversion we have had out of it from time to time? You made one
of the patches yourself, don't you remember, Kitty? We always told him
that in each patch he had concealed a sovereign. Well, hot as the days
are, he has been wearing that coat, and a figure of fun he did look. The
Mahoney boys and Pat and I thought we would take a rise out of him; so
one night when he was asleep we stole up to his lair and got hold of the
precious coat. We bundled it up and were off with it. We had to cross
the lake, in the old boat with a hole in the bottom, in order to get
home in time, and what do you think happened? Up came a squall, the boat
was upset, and Paddy's coat sank to the bottom of the lake. We swam to
the shore and thought it would be an easy matter to fish up the old coat
on the following morning; but although we dragged and dragged, and Pat
and I both dived down to the bottom a good dozen of times, the coat had
sunk in the deep mud and we could not find it, no nor a sign of it.
Well, of course, our one hope was that no one should know; but what was
our horror to be confronted by no less a person than Wheel-about
himself. You know that craze he has about never speaking. Well, he spoke
to us and pretty sharp too, and told us he knew we had taken the coat,
and didn't he look thunders and daggers at us, and we funked it so
awfully--yes, I will confess it, Kits, your brave Laurie funked it like
anything--for Wheel-about did really look like a roadman; at last there
was no help for it--we had to out with the truth. Oh, didn't he raise a
yell louder than anything you ever heard, and then I told him that if I
could not get back the coat I would give him ten pounds for certain by
Saturday next. He said if I did he would lie quiet for a bit and not
tell the governor, so I want you like a blessed girleen to lend me the
money. Send it off the very instant you read this; for if you don't the
saints alone know what will happen. We are certain to be sent to a
school in England, at least I am. From what you tell me, Kitterkins, of
that place, I should think it would break our hearts to smithereens. Now
look sharp and send the money. Your loving brother,
"LAURIE."
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Kitty starting to her feet. "Do you mind my going
out at once, Mrs. Denvers?"
"Certainly not, my love. Tea will be ready at five o'clock. Are you
going far?"
"Only to Elma Lewis' house. I want to see her; it is awfully important."
"But Elma lives quite two miles from here."
"Oh, that does not matter. I am sure to find my way. It is most urgent,"
said Kitty.
She rushed out of the room, pinned on her hat, and a moment later was
walking down the street as fast as she could go. She crossed a field
and a common, and after a time got into that part of the town where Elma
lived. By dint of asking half a dozen children and three or four
policemen she at last reached Constantine Road, and presently found the
right house. She ran up the steps and sounded a rattling rat-tat on the
knocker. The moment she did so a girl with a mop of untidy red hair
peeped up at her from the area below.
"Come and open the door at once," called Kitty. "Why do you keep a lady
waiting?"
The girl soon appeared, tying on her cap and apron as she did so.
"I thought as they was all out for the day," she began, "--Oh, miss, I
beg your pardon."
Kitty, notwithstanding her rather rude words, presented a very charming
spectacle as she stood on the steps. She was dressed not only in the
height of the fashion, but wore such a perfectly captivating little
toque at the back of her head as to fire the fancy and take the little
wit which she possessed out of Mrs. Lewis' maid-of-all-work.
Maggie had never seen anything so captivating nor so ravishing. A wild
desire to make a toque like it to put on her own towzled locks on the
following Sunday caused her to stare so hard at Kitty with her mouth
wide open that she did not hear a word that young lady was saying.
"Are you in a dream?" asked Kitty Malone. "I want to see Miss Elma
Lewis. Is she at home?"
"Miss Helma? No, miss, that she ain't," replied Maggie. "Oh, I beg your
pardon, miss; but it's it's the bonnet at the top of your head."
"My bonnet?" said Kitty.
"Yes, miss. Oh, I do beg your pardon, miss--I was took all of a heap.
Yes, miss, I'm attending now. But oh, if you would just turn your head a
little."
"You must be mad," said Kitty. But her eyes began to sparkle.
"Do listen to me," she continued; "it's most important. Is Miss Elma not
at home?"
"No, miss; she's out for the day, and so is the missus and Miss Carrie.
They're all out a-pleasuring in their different ways, and they has left
me at home to drudge. I'm the household drudge, miss, and no wonder I'm
took with anything so pretty. Do you mind telling me, miss, if them
wiolets is real?"
"Oh, the violets in my toque--are those what you are staring at?" said
Kitty. "Well, now, I'll tell you what I'll do--I'll give you the whole
bunch if you'll let me come into the house and write a letter to Elma,
and if you'll further faithfully promise that you will give it to her
the instant she comes home."
"To be sure I will, miss. Come right along in. Oh, what a beautiful
young lady you is!"
"Every one tells me I am beautiful," thought Kitty. "It really is very
pleasant. I am more flattered here than I was in Ireland. People told me
there I had a face like cream and roses, or cream and strawberries, and
father used to say that I had washed it in the fairies' dew, and Laurie
would tell me that I was a bouncing girl and no mistake; but then Aunt
Honora was always saying: 'Kitty dear, beauty is only skin deep, and
don't be set up by it, child. Handsome is that handsome does, Kitty.'
Oh, how she would deave me with that old proverb. But here they seem to
think beauty is a talent, and I ought to be desperately proud of it. Oh,
faith, but why do I think of these things when my precious duck of a
Laurie is in the mess he has got into. He go to England to break his
heart, the darling! Not a bit of it; not while his Kitty has her wits
about her."
Meanwhile Maggie conducted this ravishing and welcome visitor into the
tiny sitting-room, furnished her with pen, ink, and paper, and then
began to hover about near the door in order to get another view of the
lovely cap.
Kitty bent her head over the sheet of paper and indited a letter in hot
and furious haste:
"DEAR ELMA: I am so sorry, but I must ask you to return that eight
pounds to me immediately. I want it for Laurie. He has got into trouble
and requires it; so don't keep me waiting a single minute if you can
help it. I am so sorry you are out; but will you bring it to me the
instant you return home? It is of the most vital importance. I am in
dreadful trouble, and nothing else will save Laurie. Yours in great
haste, KITTY MALONE."
Having written the letter, Kitty looked round for an envelope; Maggie
also searched to right and left, but could not find one.
"But it will be all right, miss," she said. "I'll lay it just as it is
flat out on the table, and Miss Helma will see it the moment she comes
in."
"Thank you," answered Kitty. "And now I must go. Be sure you give it to
her her the instant she returns, and tell her to come straight to me
with the money, for I must send it off to-night whatever happens. It is
a money transaction; and you understand, don't you? What is your name?"
"Maggie, miss."
"Well, you understand, Maggie, that any transaction connected with money
is very important."
"Like the Bank of England, miss?"
"Yes, to be sure, and--"
"Oh, miss, forgive me; but you promised me them wiolets."
"To be sure I did."
Kitty snatched them from her toque, flung them to Maggie, who caught
them in an ecstacy, and a moment later was running home as fast as she
could.