THE ADVENTURE DISCUSSED.
The ribbons were criticised, approved, or condemned, according to
the various tastes of the girls. Those who were familiar with the
difficulties attending country shopping were disposed to be satisfied,
and thought the committee had done as well as they could have done
themselves, which is as high praise as can be expected from any body.
But the candy purchases gave unmixed delight to those who had sent
for it, and ecstatic little screams of glee hailed the opening of
the packages. The second class--that is, the little girls--had gone
up to Miss Blake’s room for the regular twilight twenty minutes of
poetry that they had three times a week, and the first-room girls
all adjourned to the spare room to embellish the dolls with the
newly acquired ribbons. It was then that the candy was produced and
generously distributed by its owners.
“Now tell us all about the excursion,” said Katie, with her mouth
full of caramels and her hands busy with a blue ribbon. “Of course
Miss Smith was perishing to know what you wanted of so many shades of
ribbon, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Bell; “but she’s a dear old soul, and when we told her
about the dolls she offered to make a dozen straw hats for them, and
she’s going to send them up to-morrow.”
“Hurrah for Miss Smith!” exclaimed Lily, “and what a splendid idea! We
never thought of head-covering. Let’s go to work and make little cloth
tennis caps and Greek caps for a lot of the bare-headed young persons.
They’re easy to make, and I know how to cut them out.”
That suggestion was well received, and the work was immediately begun;
but Lily was not too much absorbed in cutting out the caps to ask for
more particulars from Bell and Fannie.
“Yes; whom did you see?” said Katie, remembering her own disappointment
at not being elected one of the shoppers.
“We saw Miss Smith,” said Fannie, teasingly.
“Well, I should say you did, by the pile of ribbons you bought. It was
real good in her to give so much for the money; but who else did you
see?”
“A young and blooming stranger,” said Fannie.
“Gracious! Was she a friend of Miss Smith?”
“Not she, but he.”
“For pity’s sake, a man, a young man? Why, what do you expect Mrs.
Abbott to say to you hapless girls if you have been meeting a young
man?”
“We couldn’t help meeting him,” said Fannie.
“But we didn’t meet him at all, Fannie,” said Bell; “he overtook us and
spoke before he got up to us; that was after we passed him, you know.”
“You seem slightly incoherent,” said Edna. “He passed you and you
passed him. And where was Miss Blake all this time? She is not much
of a ‘dragon’ if she lets strange young men speak to the girls in the
street. My, wouldn’t madame have made short work of that kind of a
teacher.”
“Miss Blake is all right,” said Bell, stolidly, unwilling to explain
the situation.
Lily laid down her scissors and looked the committee over sharply.
“Girls,” she said, “you are keeping back something interesting. Now,
make a clean breast of it and tell us the whole story right away.
Confess now, unless you want to be handed over for torture.”
Then Fannie, acting as spokesman, told their adventure fully. Their
hearers were much amazed that the two steadiest girls in the school
should have been so daring as to go deliberately to the station at the
risk of seriously displeasing Mrs. Abbott.
“It reminds me,” said Lily, pensively, “of a solemn old horse my
grandfather had who was steady as a turtle all through his colthood and
slow middle age, but when he was at the over-ripe age of twenty-two
he ran away for the first time and spilt my grandmother out of the
buggy in her best bonnet. Four steady, obedient years you two studious
scholars have led sober lives beneath this scholastic roof, and now you
disgrace yourselves and break your record. Ah, it is a weepful fact
that you can’t ’most always tell what serious nags and solemn girls can
do in the way of giddiness!”
“Tell us something about the fellow,” said Edna; “what did he look
like? Dark, melting eyes, rich voice, smooth olive skin, etc., eh?”
“Olive skin, to be sure, and eyes that looked as if they had been
boiled till they were half melted,” answered Fannie. “He was horrid.”
“I didn’t think he was so bad-looking,” said Bell; “his features were
not out of the way; the worst thing about him was his looking so vulgar
and flashy. It seems queer that such a person should be a particular
friend of Mrs. Abbott’s.”
“O, people have queer friends, sometimes,” said Edna, “but I don’t
believe she’ll take his sister.”
“I hope we shall know when he comes to see Mrs. Abbott, so we can try
to get a look at him,” said Katie. “Should you know him again, girls?”
“I should say so; we are not likely to forget that big plaid suit or
that high hooked nose.”
“O, he had a high hooked nose, had he?” said Edna. “Perhaps your friend
is some relation to that inquisitive peddler who wanted to find out if
any one in the school wore mourning. He had that kind of a nose.”
Marion had not joined in the conversation, but while she looped some
white baby-ribbon into a small rosette she listened attentively to the
girls’ account of their adventure. Now she asked timidly if it would
not be better to tell Mrs. Abbott about the man.
“And why should we walk ourselves right straight into hot water?” said
Fannie, petulantly. “I know we did wrong in going to the station, but
it was no crime. We never have been forbidden.”
“I am the most worried for fear the young man will mention seeing us
there when he comes to see her,” said Bell.
“Don’t you worry,” said Lily; “that dark-eyed youth will never come.
He’s a gay deceiver. Imagine a fellow like that being a friend of Mrs.
Abbott’s.”
“Why in the world should he say so, then?”
“Perhaps he saw from your lamb-like countenance that you were innocent
enough to answer his questions. He may have some reason for finding out
something about this establishment. As Edna said about her peddler,
perhaps he’s an enterprising burglar on the lookout for points.”
“Well, anyway, we didn’t tell him any thing.”
“But you said you told him Elfie was here,” said Marion, looking
troubled, “and I do really think it would be best to tell Mrs. Abbott.”
“Ridiculous!” sneered Edna; “I don’t think so.”
“It wasn’t good taste at all in the girls to mention any name to a
strange creature like that,” said Lily; “but I don’t suppose he will
ever think of it again. What I think was the worst thing was going off
to the station, and if it were I, I should tell Mrs. Abbott what I did;
I always feel better after I have ‘confessed,’ though I own it’s pretty
hard work.”
But Bell and Fannie either lacked moral courage or were not in the mood
to take her very excellent advice.