Jessie's Parrot

Gracie fidgeted and wriggled uneasily; but we who know what she had done can readily believe that it was more pride than a strict love of the truth which led her to say to herself that she was "not sorry," and "she could not tell a story by saying so."

"I beg your pardon, ma'am, and I won't do so again," she repeated, seeing that Miss Ashton waited for her answer.

Miss Ashton did not wish to force her to say that which she did not feel, and she saw that it was of no use to argue with her in her present stubborn mood; but she talked quietly and kindly to her, setting before her the folly and the wrong of the self-love and vanity which were ruling her conduct, and day by day spoiling all that was good and fair in her character.

"See what trouble they have brought you into now, Gracie," she said; "and unless you check them in time, my child, they will lead you deeper into sin. I scarcely know you for the same little girl who first came to me, so much have these faults grown upon you; and they are fast destroying all the affection and confidence of your school-fellows. Why, Gracie, I have heard one little girl say that 'Gracie thought so much of herself that it sometimes made her forget to be very true.'"

Gracie started. Was this the character her self-love was earning for her? she who desired to stand so high in all points with the world.

Ah! but it was for the praise of man, and not for the honor and glory of God that Gracie strove to outshine all others; and she walked by her own strength, and the poor, weak prop must fail her and would lay her low.

"Forget to be very true!"

How far she had done this, even Miss Ashton did not dream; but it seemed to Gracie that she had chosen her words to give her the deepest thrust, and she bowed her head in shame and fear.

But Miss Ashton, knowing nothing of what was passing in that guilty young heart, was glad to see this, and believed that her words were at last making some impression on Gracie, and that she was taking her counsel and reproof in a different spirit from that in which she generally received them.

Strange to say, in all the miserable and remorseful thoughts which had made her wretched since yesterday afternoon, it had not once entered her mind how she was to face Nellie when the poor child should make known the misfortune which had befallen her.

One by one the children came in, and how awkward Gracie felt in meeting them may readily be imagined by any one who has suffered from some similar and well-merited disgrace. Still she tried, as she whispered to Hattie she should do, to "behave as if nothing had happened;" and when little Belle, after looking at her wistfully for a moment as if undecided how to act, came up and kissed her, saying, "I'm glad to see you, Gracie," she answered rather ungraciously, "I'm sure it's not so very long since you saw me," and sent the dear little girl away feeling very much rebuffed.

And yet she really felt Belle's innocent friendliness, and her sweet attempt to make her welcome and at her ease; but pride would not let her show it.

Nellie was one of the last to arrive, and her troubled and woe-begone face startled Gracie and smote her to the heart.

"Such a dreadful thing has happened to me," said Nellie, when she was questioned by the other children; and the tears started to her eyes afresh as she spoke.

"What is it? What is it?" asked a number of eager voices.

"I don't know how it can have happened," said Nellie, hardly able to speak for the sobs she vainly tried to keep back. "I have been so, so careful; but there is an ugly spot like ink or something on my mat. I can't think how it ever came there, for I put it in my desk very carefully when school began yesterday, and did not take it out till I got home, and I did not know there was any ink near it. But when I unrolled it last evening the stain was there, and mamma thinks it is ink, and she cannot get it out. And I've taken such pains to keep the mat clean and nice."

And here poor Nellie's voice broke down entirely, while Gracie, feeling as if her self-command, too, must give way, opened her desk and put her head therein, with a horrible choking feeling in her throat.

"We'll all tell Mrs. Howard it came somehow through not any fault of yours," said Lily. "Never mind, Nellie, yours is the best mat, anyhow: we all know it;" and Lily cast a defiant and provoking glance at Gracie, which was quite lost upon the latter.

Lily had suggested on the day before, that when Gracie came back to school they should "all behave just as if nothing had happened," just what Gracie intended to do; but generous Lily had said it in quite a different spirit from that in which Gracie proposed it to herself.

But Gracie's rebuff to Belle, and the seeming indifference with which she treated Nellie's misfortune, roused Lily's indignation once more; for she thought, as did many of the other children, that Gracie did not feel sorry for Nellie's trouble, since it gave her the greater chance of having her own work pronounced the best.

"Yes, we will tell Mrs. Howard," said Dora Johnson: "yours was really the best mat of all, though Gracie's was almost as nice; and we will tell her something happened to it that you could not help, and perhaps she will not mind it."

"Perhaps a vase standing on it would cover the spot," said Laura Middleton.

Nellie shook her head.

"No," she said, "that would not make it any better. Mrs. Howard said that the best and neatest mat must take the highest premium, and mine is not the neatest now. I wouldn't feel comfortable to do any thing that was not quite fair, even if you all said I might."

"That was not quite fair!"

More and more ashamed, and feeling how far behind Nellie left her in honesty and fairness, Gracie still sat fumbling in her desk, looking for nothing.

"Well," said Dora, "we'll speak to Mrs. Howard about it, and see what she says: won't we, Gracie?"

Gracie muttered something which might mean either yes or no.

"Augh!" said Lily, "what do you talk to that proudy about it for? She don't care a bit. I b'lieve she's just glad and wouldn't help Nellie if she could."

Gracie made no answer: she was too miserable for words or to think of answering Lily's taunts, and she would have given up all thought of having any thing to do with the fair to have had Nellie's mat safely in her possession once more. Oh, if she had never yielded to temptation or to Hattie's persuasions!

"How you do act!" whispered Hattie to Gracie. "If you don't take care they will suspect something."

"I can't help it," returned Gracie in the same tone: "it is such an awful story that we have told."

"It is not a story," said Hattie; "we've neither of us said one word about the mat."

This was a new view of the matter; but it brought no comfort to Gracie's conscience She knew that the acted deceit was as bad as the spoken one, perhaps in this case even worse.

She felt as if she could not bear this any longer, as if she must tell, must confess what she had done; and yet – how? How could she lower herself so in the eyes of her schoolmates? she who had always held herself so high, been so scornful over the least meanness, equivocation, or approach to falsehood!

A more wretched little girl than Gracie was that morning it would have been hard to find; but her teacher and schoolmates thought her want of spirit arose from the recollection of her late naughtiness and the feeling of shame, and took as little notice of it as possible.

And Lily, repenting of her resentment when she saw how dull and miserable Gracie seemed, threw her arms about her neck as they were leaving school, and said, "Please forgive me my provokingness this morning, Gracie. I ought to be ashamed, and I am."

But Gracie could not return, scarcely suffer, the caress, and dared not trust herself to speak, as she thought how furious Lily's indignation would be if she but knew the truth.

X.

A GAME OF CHARACTERS

AT home or at school, studying, working or playing – for the latter she had little heart now – Gracie could not shake off the weight that was upon her mind and spirits. Even her work for the fair had lost its interest; and as for the mat, Nellie's mat, she could not bear the sight of it. She went to sleep at night thinking of it, and trying to contrive some way out of her difficulty, though she would not listen to the voice of her conscience which whispered that there was but one way; and she woke in the morning with the feeling that something dreadful had happened. Appetite and spirits failed; she grew fretful and irritable, and her mother imagined that she must be ill, though Gracie resolutely persisted that there was nothing the matter with her, and that she felt quite well.

"Gracie," said Mrs. Howard one morning after three or four days had passed, "it appears to me that you are not doing much on your mat. How is that?"

"I don't care," answered Gracie, fretfully. "I don't believe I'll finish it. I'm tired of the old thing."

"That will not do, my child," said her mother. "You have undertaken to do this for your grandmamma and for the fair, and I cannot have you stop it now without some good reason. Bring the mat to me."

Gracie went for the mat very unwillingly, though she dared not refuse nor even show her reluctance.

"It really does you credit," said Mrs. Howard, taking it from her hands: "it is so smooth and even, and you have kept it so neat. But you must be more industrious, dear, if you are to have it finished in time. And see, Gracie," she continued, looking at it more closely, "these last few lines look not quite as nicely as the rest. There is a difference in the work, and you will have to take more pains than you have done here. It looks almost as if another person had worked it. You have not let any one help you with it, have you?"

"No, mamma," replied Gracie in a low tone and with a frightened feeling. Was there really such a difference between her work and Nellie's that it was so easily detected?

It had not occurred either to her or to Hattie, perhaps they did not know, that the work of two different hands seldom or never matches well upon embroidery in worsted, and that it is almost sure to be perceived. She was dismayed at the thought that her mother had noticed this, and now every stitch that she took seemed to make the difference more plain, take what pains she might.

She began to feel angry and indignant at Hattie for leading her into this sin, shutting her eyes to the fact that, if she had not allowed proud and jealous thoughts to creep into her heart, temptation would not have had so much influence over her.

She no longer took any pleasure in the society of her little friend, and shrank from her in a way that Hattie perceived, and by which she was hurt; for she was disposed in her own mind to throw all the blame upon Hattie, forgetting that she was really the most to blame, since she had been better taught, and saw more clearly the difference between right and wrong.