"A HARD ROW TO HOE"
Since Ruth Fielding had organized the S.B.'s, or Sweetbriars, there had
been little hazing at Briarwood Hall. Of course, this was the first real
opening of the school year since that auspicious occasion; but the effect
of the new society and its teachings upon the whole school was marked.
Rivalries had ceased to a degree. The old Upedes, of which The Fox had
been the head, no longer played their tricks. The Fox had grown much older
in appearance, if not in years. She had had her lesson.
Belle and Lluella and Heavy were not so reckless, either. And as the
S.B.'s stood for friendship, kindness, helpfulness, and all its members
wore the pretty badge, it was likely to be much easier for those "infants"
who joined the school now.
Ann Hicks was bound to receive some hard knocks, even as Mrs. Tellingham
had suggested. But "roughing it" a little is sometimes good for girls as
well as boys.
In her own western home Ann could have held her own with anybody. She was
so much out of her usual element here at Briarwood that she was like a
startled hare. She scented danger on all sides.
Her roommates could not always defend her, although even Mercy, the
unmerciful, tried. Ann Hicks was so big, and blundering. She was taller
than most girls of her age, and "raw-boned" like her uncle. Some time she
might really be handsome; but there was little promise of it as yet.
When the principal started her in her studies, it was soon discovered that
Ann, big girl though she was, had to take some of the lessons belonging to
the primary grade. And she made a sorry appearance in recitation, at best.
There were plenty of girls to laugh at her. There is nothing so cruel as a
schoolgirl's tongue when it is unbridled. And unless the victim is blessed
with either a large sense of humor, or an apt brain for repartee, it goes
hard with her.
Poor Ann had neither--she was merely confused and miserable.
She saw the other girls of her room--and their close friends in the
neighboring quartette--going cheerfully about the term's work. They had
interests that the girl from the West, with her impoverished mind, could
not even appreciate.
She had to study so hard--even some of the simplest lessons--that she had
little time to learn games. She did not care for gymnasium work, although
there were probably few girls at the school as muscular as herself. Tennis
seemed silly to her. Nobody rode at the Hall, and she longed to bestride a
pony and dash off for a twenty-mile canter.
Nothing that she was used to doing on the ranch would appeal to these
girls here--Ann was quite sure of that. Ruth and the others who had been
with them for that all-too-short month at Silver Ranch seemed to have
forgotten the riding, and the roping, and all.
Then, Helen had her violin--and loved it. Ruth was practicing singing all
the time she could spare, for she was already a prominent member of the
Glee Club. When the girl of the Red Mill sang, Ann Hicks felt her heart
throb and the tears rise in her eyes. She loved Ruth's kind of music; yet
she, herself, could not carry a tune.
Mercy was strictly attentive to her own books. Mercy was a bookworm--nor
did she like being asked questions about her studies. Those first few
weeks Ann Hicks's recitations did not receive very high marks.
Often some of the girls who did not know her very well laughed because she
carried books belonging to the primary grade. Ann Hicks had many studies
to make up that her mates had been drilled in while they were in the
lower classes.
One day at mail time (and in a boarding school that is a most important
hour) Ann received a very tempting-looking box by parcel post. She had
been initiated into the meaning of "boxes from home." Even Aunt Alvirah
had sent a box to Ruth, filled with choicest homemade dainties.
Ann expected nothing like that. Uncle Bill would never think of it--and he
wouldn't know what to buy, anyway. The box fairly startled the girl from
Silver Ranch.
"What is it? Something good to eat, I bet," cried Heavy, who was on hand,
of course. "Open it, Ann--do."
"Come on! Let's see what the goodies are," urged another girl, but who
smiled behind her hand.
"I don't know who would send _me_ anything," said Ann, slowly.
"Never mind the address. Open it!" cried a third speaker, and had Ann
noted it, she would have realized that some of the most trying girls in
the school had suddenly surrounded her.
With trembling fingers she tore off the outside wrapper without seeing
that the box had been mailed at the local post office--Lumberton!
A very decorative box was enclosed.
"H-m-m!" gasped Heavy. "Nothing less than fancy nougatines in _that_."
She was aiding the heartless throng, but did not know it. It would have
never entered Heavy's mind to do a really mean thing.
Ann untied the narrow red ribbon. She raised the cover. Tissue paper
covered something very choice----?
_A dunce cap._
For a moment Ann was stricken motionless. The girls about her shouted. One
coarse, thoughtless girl seized the cap, pulled it from the box, and
clapped it on Ann Hicks's black hair.
The delighted crowd shouted more shrilly. Heavy was thunderstruck. Then
she sputtered:
"Well! I never would have believed there was anybody so mean as that in
the whole of Briarwood School."
But Ann, who had held in her temper as she governed a half-wild pony on
the range, until this point, suddenly "let go all holts," as Bill Hicks
would have expressed it.
She tore the cap from her head and stamped upon it and the fancy box it
had come in. She struck right and left at the laughing, scornful faces of
the girls who had so baited her.
Had it not been disgraceful, one might have been delighted with the change
in the expression of those faces--and in the rapidity with which the
change came about.
More than one blow landed fairly. The print of Ann's fingers was
impressed in red upon the cheeks of those nearest to her. They ran
screaming--some laughing, some angry.
Heavy's weight (for the fleshy girl had seized Ann about the waist) was
all that made the enraged girl give over her pursuit of her tormentors.
Fortunately, Ruth herself came running to the spot. She got Ann away and
sat by her all the afternoon in their room, making up her own delinquent
lessons afterward.
But the affair could not be passed over without comment. Some of the girls
had reported Ann's actions. Of course, such a disgraceful thing as a girl
slapping another was seldom heard of in Briarwood. Mrs. Tellingham, who
knew very well where the blame lay, dared not let the matter go without
punishing Ann, however.
"I am grieved that one of our girls--a young lady in the junior
grade--should so forget herself," said the principal. "Whatever may have
been the temptation, such an exhibition of temper cannot be allowed. I am
sure she will not yield to it again; nor shall I pass leniently over the
person who may again be the cause of Ann Hicks losing her temper."
This seemed to Ann to be "the last straw." "She might have better put me
in the primary grade in the beginning," the ranch girl said, spitefully.
"Then I wouldn't have been among those who despise me. I hate them all!
I'll just get away from here----"
But the thought of running away a second time rather troubled her. She had
worried her uncle greatly the first time she had done so. Now he was sure
she was in such good hands that she wouldn't wish to run away.
Ann knew that she could not blame Ruth Fielding, and the other girls who
were always kind to her. She merely shrank from being with them, when they
knew so much more than she did.
It was her pride that was hurt. Had she taken the teasing of the meaner
girls in a wiser spirit, she knew they would not have sent her the dunce
cap. They continued to tease her because they knew they could hurt her.
"I--I wish I could show them I could do things that they never dreamed of
doing!" muttered Ann, angrily, yet wistfully, too. "I'd like to fling a
rope, or manage a bad bronc', or something they never saw a girl do
before.
"Book learning isn't everything. Oh! I have half a mind to give up and go
back to the ranch. Nobody made fun of me out there--they didn't dare! And
our folks are too kind to tease that way, anyhow," thought the western
girl.
"Uncle Bill is just paying out his good money for nothing. He said Ruth
was a little lady--and Helen, too. I knew he wanted me to be the same,
after he got acquainted with them and saw how fine they were.
"But you sure 'can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.' That's as
certain as shootin'! If I stay here I've got a mighty hard row to
hoe--and--and I don't believe I've got the pluck to hoe it." Ann groaned,
and shook her tousled black head.