MAUDE'S TROUBLES.
Poor little Maude had not been enjoying this first day at school. It
had begun with tears, and she had just been having another burst of
anger, and had thought that she could not possibly stay in such a
school another hour. It was a new experience to the self-willed child
to have to give up her own way, and submit to regulations that she did
not like; and although she had managed the courtesy that had brought
Ruby to grief, without the least trouble, as she had been to
dancing-school, and could courtesy in the most approved French style,
yet she found a great grievance waiting for her as soon as she reached
her room.
Mrs. Boardman was waiting for her.
"Maude, I want to help you arrange your hair a little differently," she
said. "Miss Chapman does not like the girls to wear their hair here at
school as you wear yours, flying all over your shoulders. She does not
think it neat, nor does she like little girls to pay so much attention
to their appearance while they are at school. Of course she wants you
to be neat, but not dressed up as if you were going to a party. She
likes her scholars to wear their hair braided, and I will help you
braid yours now, as I suppose you cannot do it alone if you are not
used to it, and you have no room-mate yet to help you."
Maude looked at Mrs. Boardman in angry amazement.
If there was any one thing of which vain little Maude was prouder than
another, it was of the crinkled, waving hair that fell below her
shoulders. She rarely forgot it, and was always playing with a lock of
it, or tipping her head over her shoulder, like a little peacock
admiring his fine tail.
"I don't want to wear it braided," she exclaimed. "I like it this way.
It would look like ugly little pig-tails if it was braided, and I won't
have it that way. Oh, I want to go home. I don't like it here one
single bit. I am sure my mamma would n't let me have my hair braided,
like a little charity girl."
Mrs. Boardman was very patient with the spoiled child.
[Illustration: "MRS. BOARDMAN WAS VERY PATIENT WITH THE SPOILED CHILD"
(missing from book)]
"Hush, dear; I would n't talk that way," she said. "I hoped your mamma
had spoken to you about it before she went away, for I told her that
Miss Chapman would want you to wear your hair differently. She told me
that she wanted you to follow all the rules of the school, whatever
they were; so I know she wishes you to wear your hair as Miss Chapman
requires the others to wear their hair. Now, let me braid it for you,
for it is growing near dinner-time."
But Maude threw herself down the bed, and began to cry.
"And now I must tell you about another rule," said Mrs. Boardman. "I
expect it will seem to you as if we had a great many rules here; but
you will soon get used to them, and then you will not find them
burdensome. It is against the rules to sit upon your bed during the
day-time. You see it will make the bed look untidy, and that is the
reason for this rule. Now, we will straighten the bed out nicely, and
then it will be quite tidy again."
Maude did not move.
"Oh, I must go home," she sobbed. "I can't stay here. It is a
perfectly dreadful place. I have to do everything I don't like to do
and I can't do the least little tiny thing that I like to do, and my
beautiful hair will look so ugly, and I just can't stand it."
Some of the other teachers might have reproved the little girl for her
fretful words, but kind-hearted Mrs. Boardman was too sorry for her.
She could imagine how hard it must seem to a child who had never been
under any control at all, to find herself obliged to obey rules,
whether she liked them or not. She leaned over and stroked the golden
hair.
"Now, dear, I know what a good little girl you are going to be when you
think about it. I was very proud of you this morning, and thought I
should like to have you for one of my special little friends very much.
You see I am not exactly one of the teachers, and so I can have a pet
when I want one. I know you don't like this rule, but then you are
going to obey it because it is right and it will please your mother to
know you are being a good girl. Something worse than having my hair
braided happened to me when I was about your age. Jump up and let me
braid your hair, and I will tell you about it. Come, dear. It is ever
so much easier to do things because one wants to, you know, than
because one is made to do them, and you will have to obey the rules
whether you want to or not; so if I were in your place I should prefer
to obey them of my own free will, because I wanted to do just what was
right, and please my mother. I don't think you could guess what I had
to have done to my hair."
Maude stood up and helped to pat the bed straight and flat again. She
knew that, as Mrs. Boardman had said, she would have to obey the rules,
whether she wanted to or not, and she did realize that it would be much
more sensible to follow them willingly than to be in disgrace and be
forced into compliance. And there was a better feeling than that in
her heart, too.
She felt that she was in a place where no one cared for her clothes nor
for the little airs she liked to put on, whenever she found any one to
admire her, but where she would be valued just for herself, and for her
behavior. In that one morning she had noticed how little girls who had
not thought of themselves, but only of pleasing others, had found
friends at once, while no one had seemed to care for her society; and
she realized that if she was to have any love she must try to deserve
it.
Mrs. Boardman was the one person who seemed willing to be her friend,
and who tried to help her do right, and was patient with her
ill-temper; and selfish little Maude was grateful for the first time in
her life for kindness, and she did not want to disappoint any one who
thought that she meant to be good.
She would try to be good, at any rate, even if it was not very pleasant.
After the bed was in order again, she stood still while Mrs. Boardman
brushed her hair out and braided it for her.
"I must tell you what happened to my hair," she began cheerfully. "I
had had typhoid fever, and my hair was all dropping out, so that the
doctor said it must be shaved off. I did not want to have it shaved
one bit, for it was quite long and had been thick, but of course I had
to do as my mother said, and have it shaved. Oh, I felt so badly about
it. I cried and cried the day it was all shaved off, and when I first
looked at myself in the glass afterwards, I was almost frightened, I
looked so dreadfully. Did you ever see any one's head after the hair
had been shaved off?"
"No, ma'am," answered Maude.
"Well, then, you cannot imagine what it looks like. My head looked
more like a ball than anything else, and where the hair had been it was
perfectly smooth and bald, and there was only a purplish look to show
where it had grown. I ran away and hid myself in the barn and cried
harder than ever. But I had something nice happen to make up for all
this."
"What was it?" asked Maude.
"When my hair grew again it was curly, and curly hair was what I had
always wished for, and never expected to have; so you can imagine how
delighted I was. There, see how nicely your hair looks now that I have
braided it. Have you a ribbon to tie the ends?"
By the time Maude had found a ribbon and Mrs. Boardman had tied it at
the ends of the braids, it was time for her to hurry away and look
after some of the other girls; but Maude's face wore a very different
expression from the tearful, angry one that had been upon it when she
first heard that her hair must be braided. There was a wistful look in
her eyes that made Mrs. Boardman turn back and give her a kiss. "We
are going to be good friends, are we not, Maude?" she said. "And you
are going to be so good that I shall be very proud to say, 'Maude is
one of my special friends.'"
"Yes, ma'am, I will try to be good," Maude answered. "Thank you," she
added, with unusual gratitude.
She was looking quite cheerful when Ruby came in.
"I was afraid you were lonesome, Maude," she exclaimed, "and I came to
go down to dinner with you. When is your room-mate coming, do you
suppose?"
"I don't know," Maude answered. "Mrs. Boardman said she thought she
would come to-night, or maybe to-morrow morning."
"Are you glad you are going to have some one in the room with you?"
asked Ruby.
"I don't know," Maude answered. "If she is nice, I will be glad, and
if she is n't nice, I spose I shall be sorry. How did you like school
this morning?"
"Ever so much," Ruby answered, enthusiastically. "Did n't you?"
"Not very much," Maude replied. "I think the lessons are awfully hard."
Ruby was very much tempted to say something that would have sounded
rather boastful, but she checked herself.
It had been on the tip of her tongue to exclaim,--
"Why, if you think your lessons are hard, in a class like yours, what
do you suppose mine must be, when I am in with such big girls;" but she
only said,--
"I spose the first day everything seems harder; but when we get used to
the teachers and the lessons, they won't seem so hard."
The dinner-bell rang, and Ruby exclaimed,--
"Oh, I am so hungry. It just seems as if I had not had anything to eat
for a year. Let's hurry and go down before the rest, Maude."
But everybody else was hungry, too, so Ruby and Maude were by no means
the first of the stream of girls that hurried into the dining-room.