SPRING VACATION.
The bright light of a sunny day has a wonderful influence in quieting
fears, and the next morning when Susan waked and found her room
cheerful, everything looking natural and pleasant, her first feeling
was one of shame for all she had suffered the night before. Nothing
was easier now than to make herself believe she had been foolish in
her suspicion of Marion; indeed, it was not long before she had made
herself almost sure that Marion knew nothing about the stolen story,
that she had wronged her in suspecting, even if she did, that she
would be mean enough to betray her. For the first time since she
copied it, she treated Marion not only kindly but affectionately, much
to Marion's surprise, for she knew how near she had come to betraying
Susan, and remembered Miss Ashton's saying, "If you do not choose to
tell me what is the matter with Susan, I must be all the more
observant of her myself." Would she watch her? Could she ever in any
way find out about "Storied West Rock"? "At any rate," Marion
comforted herself by thinking, "it will not be through me; but I wish
I had not said even what I did."
She wondered over Susan's advances, and met them coldly, shamefacedly.
"If you only knew," she said to herself, "how different you would
act!"
Very important as these events seem to those particularly engaged,
they make little apparent difference in the life of a large school.
Marion again made faulty recitations, and again her teachers were
troubled by them; but Susan, having in a measure, she could hardly
understand how, been thrown off her fears, was unusually brilliant in
her classes, winning what she valued so much, words of approbation
from her teachers.
The school work went on now with much success. The holiday break-up
was fairly over. Washington's Birthday was not celebrated other than
with an abundance of little hatchets of all designs and colors. Easter
was too far away, and the _animus_ of the school was for quiet study.
Even the club held meetings less often. The two girls who had been the
chief planners of whatever mischief originated from it, Mamie Smythe
and Annie Ormond, were on their best behavior, knowing full well that
another misdeed, no matter of what character, meant expulsion.
Upon these weeks preceding the Easter vacation, Miss Ashton had
learned to rely for the best part of the year's work; so uneventfully,
with the exception of now and then some slight escapade on the part
of the pupils, the term rolled on to its spring rest.
Easter came in the early part of April this year, but the season was
backward, even snowstorms coming now and then; and fierce winds, more
like March than April, forbade any hunting for early flowers, or
looking, as so many longing eyes did, for the swelling of the bare
branches of the trees, or the first shadowing of the green tassels
that waited to show themselves to warm sunbeams.
There were no examinations in this school, or marking the grade of
scholarship; but for all that, there was never a doubt who were the
best scholars, or who would have taken the prizes if any had been
given.
A week before Easter, Marion received a letter from her Aunt Betty,
inviting her to spend the coming recess with her; but she declined it,
asking that the visit might be deferred until the long summer
vacation, when, as she was probably not to return home, she should be
very glad to come. Evidently Aunt Betty had forgotten whatever was
unpleasant in the Thanksgiving visit, and to be among the mountains
through some of the hot summer weeks seemed to Marion would be
pleasant indeed. But when the vacation came, and she found herself
with only a few other girls almost alone in the great desolated
building, she more than once regretted her decision.
A pleasant young teacher of gymnastics, Miss Orne, was left in
charge, but she was tired, and more anxious to rest than to amuse the
girls, so they were left pretty much to themselves, and passed the ten
days of vacation in the best way they could.
"Girls will be girls," that was what Miss Ashton said when the pupils
who had been at home came back with their summer outfits, and she
found the whole attention of the school given for a few days to their
examination and comparison.
"If I could hear you talk half as much about any branch of study, or
your art lessons, as I hear you talk about your new clothes," she said
with a pleasant laugh, "I should be delighted; but I suppose nothing
seems more important to you now than the fashions, and, on the whole,
I don't know but I am glad of it."
It was this interest in their many-sided life that gave Miss Ashton
her great influence over them. The girls would take articles of
apparel to her for her inspection, and find them doubly valuable if
they met with her approval.
There was one set whose wardrobes were objects of especial interest:
those were the graduating class. Next to her bridal dress, there seems
to be no other that is thought so much of, not only by the girl, but
by her parents.
It would be idle, perhaps out of place here, to say how much display
and foolish extravagance there is at such a time. Where it can be well
afforded, it is of comparatively little importance, but a great deal
of heartache might be avoided, if the simplest costume were decided
to be the most suitable. Parents whose means have been tried to the
utmost to give their child the advantages of the school, who have
never hesitated over any labor or self-denial in order to accomplish
it, find themselves at last called to confront the question of
dollars, hardly earned or saved, squandered on a dress almost
worthless for future use, on pain of seeing their child mortified and
unhappy because she cannot, on this eventful occasion, look as well as
the others. Even Miss Ashton's influence, great as it was, had failed
to accomplish any good result in changing this long-established
custom; and for reasons best known to themselves, the present senior
class had voted in their class meetings to make their graduation day
one long to be remembered in the annals of the school.