Three Girls from School

Annie accordingly picked up the sheets, put them in order, and proceeded to read the following words:

”‘Grand Hotel, Paris, July 10.

”‘My dear Mabel, – Your last extraordinary letter and your unladylike, and frantic desire to leave such a desirable place as Mrs Lyttelton’s school have affected me a great deal. You speak with great intemperance, my dear, and annoy me much. You seem to forget that my one sole object in treating you as I do is for your good. But really, after your last letter, I do not think school can be doing you much good, and provided you will subject yourself to a test which I am about to set you, I will yield to your request. I may as well tell you first of all that I strongly disapprove of girls coming out too young. It is quite true that many girls do enter upon life and go into society at eighteen years of age; but, to begin, my dear Mabel, you are hardly that age yet; and, to go oh, I personally consider eighteen too young. At nineteen you are steadier, older, more formed. During that last precious twelve months between eighteen and nineteen you are capable of learning more than you have done in all your life previously. During those months you are becoming fitted for your future position – ’”

“Doesn’t she lecture?” said Mabel. “Didn’t I tell you so? Do go on quickly, please, Annie. Skip that part; I want you to come to the test.”

“I don’t mean to skip a single word,” said Annie.

“Well, be quick,” groaned Mabel. Annie proceeded, her level voice, which neither rose nor fell, but kept on in a sort of even monotone, reaching Mabel’s ears, who was far too interested to allow her thoughts to wander: ”‘My dear’ (continued Aunt Henrietta), ‘on receiving your last letter I wrote to Mrs Lyttelton; I could not reply to your letter until I had first heard from your excellent governess. I was pleased to find that on the whole she gave me an admirable report of you. She says that she considers you a promising pupil, not especially brilliant, but plodding and conscientious.’”

“I plodding and conscientious!” said Mabel. “Oh, the horrid epithets!”

“Keep quiet, Mabel,” said Annie. “These are the sort of remarks that are likely to impress your aunt Henrietta.”

“Are they?” said Mabel. “Then in that case I suppose I must endure them.”

“Well,” said Annie, “let me proceed. ‘Mrs Lyttelton is pleased with you, my dear. She says your music is up to the average, your drawing not bad’ – ”

“Not bad, indeed!” burst from Mabel. “I have a genius for black and white.”

“Mrs Lyttelton evidently does not see it, Mabel. But stop talking, and let me go on.

”‘Your English education, dear Mabel, is, however, your weak point. Mrs Lyttelton considers that you have no love for the good things of literature or history. This she much deplores. She mentions in her letter that she thinks more of the literature prize than any other prize the school offers, and wishes most heartily that you should obtain it. Now, my dear Mabel I make you a proposal. Win the first prize for literature on the coming prize day, and I will take you from school. You shall join me in Paris, and, in short, may consider yourself an emancipated young lady. If, on the other hand, you do not win the prize, you must patiently submit to another year of education, at the end of which time you shall again hear from me. Now, no more grumbles, my dear. Win the prize, and you are free; lose it, and you remain for another year at school.’”

“There!” said Mabel; “isn’t it like her? Did you ever in all your life hear of anything more aggravating? She dangles liberty before my eyes, and shows me at the same time that I can as little hope to obtain it as to – well, to fly. I obtain the literature prize! Oh Annie, Annie, isn’t it enough to make one mad!”

“I don’t see,” said Annie very gravely, “why you have not a chance of the prize. You have written your essay, haven’t you?”

“Oh yes; I have written something.”

“Of course,” said Annie in a low, thoughtful tone, “you were not likely to be keenly interested until you received this letter, but now matters are very different. You haven’t sent in your essay, have you?”

“No; all the essay? go in after breakfast to-morrow.”

“Well,” said Annie, “you have got to-night.”

“It is hopeless – quite hopeless,” said Mabel; and she began to pace up and down the room.

“I don’t consider it so for a minute,” said Annie.

“If it were not for Priscilla there would be a chance. The only one of us who is really clever at composition is Priscilla.”

“She is the one you have to fear. I believe that with a great deal of pains, and perhaps just a little help from me, you could manage to do something quite excellent.”

“I can’t, I can’t!” said Mabel. “There is no good trying.”

Annie’s eyes were very bright, and there had come vivid spots of colour into her cheeks.

“You have got to-night,” she said suddenly, “and you must not lose the chance.”

“Oh! it is useless,” said Mabel.

“Leave it to me,” remarked Annie. “I will come to your room after you go to bed to-night; I will tap twice on the wall, and you will know it is I. I am so sorry for you, Mabel; it is really too bad of your aunt Henrietta.”

“It is just like her,” said the angry Mabel. “She knew I could not possibly win the prize, and so she set me this test. Now, when I have to write to her meekly and say, ‘Dear, kind Auntie, – Your Mabel came out worst of all the girls who tried for the literature prize,’ she will write again and say, ‘Who was right, Mabel, you or I?’ Oh, I would give all the world to prove her wrong!”

“I quite understand,” said Annie; “I’d feel precisely the same if it were Uncle Horace; but then, with all his faults, Uncle Horace would not set me an impossible task. How queer, how queer is the world; you pine to leave school, and Priscilla Weir would give her eyes to stay! Yet poor Priscilla, who is almost a genius, has to go, and you, who are not a bit of a genius, and will never appreciate the learning that is given at the school, will have to stay.”

“Yes; things are most horribly contrary,” said Mabel.

“Unless I can set them right,” thought Annie to herself.

There was an expression on her face which Mabel could not fathom when she suddenly ran up to her, kissed her, and said, “Leave it to me.”

Chapter Two

The Temptation

Priscilla, when she left the girls’ special sitting-room, went out into the grounds. She saw a group of her young companions standing on the lawn. She was, on the whole, a favourite in the school, particularly with the younger girls, for she was gentle and good-natured, often helping them with their studies and sympathising with their small sorrows. But now she avoided her companions, and going to a shrubbery at one side of the grounds, paced up and down a shady walk.

Priscilla was very ambitious, and the letter she had received was the end of everything. She was an only child. Her father was in India, her mother dead. She was left under the care of an uncle, her mother’s brother, a rough, fairly good-natured, but utterly unsympathetic person. Priscilla’s father was a clerk, with only a very small salary, in one of the Government Houses at Madras. He could do little more than support himself, and Priscilla was therefore left to the care of Uncle Josiah. It was he who paid for her schooling, who received her during the holidays, who gave her what clothes she possessed – in short, who supplied what he considered her every want.

Occasionally she heard from her father; but by this time he had married again, had one or two little children, and found it more than ever impossible to do anything for Priscilla. When he wrote he urged her to make the most of her education, for when she was really properly educated she could support herself as a governess, or a coach, or a mistress at one of the high schools.

Priscilla was full of ambition, and the letter which she had just received seemed at that moment like her death-blow.

“What am I to do?” she thought. “When I am with Uncle Josiah, he and Aunt Susan will make me nothing whatever but a household drudge. Does not his letter – his horrid letter – say so?”

She took it out of her pocket and read the contents:

“You have had sufficient money spent on your schooling. You will be eighteen your next birthday, and surely by then you can earn your living. I don’t want you to take a post as teacher, for by all accounts teachers are badly paid. You can stay with us for six months and learn dairy-work under your aunt, and how to manage a household. There will be plenty for a hearty lass to do in looking after the little ones and attending to the linen, and helping your aunt, whenever you have an odd minute, at making the children’s clothes. If you don’t turn out a success – and your aunt Susan will tell you that pretty smart – I will apprentice you to Miss Johnson in the village, where you can learn dressmaking – a fifty times better thing, in my opinion, than teaching. We will expect you this day fortnight, and I will come to the station in the spring-cart to meet you. – Your affectionate uncle, Josiah Henderson.”

Priscilla crushed up the letter, flung it from her, and stamped on it. She was employed in this way when a voice behind caused her to turn her head, and she saw Annie Brooke running to meet her.

“Oh Priscie, whatever is the matter? What are you killing? You are stamping your foot with all your might. What poor creature has been silly enough to offend you?”

“It is this poor creature,” said Priscilla. She lifted the mangled letter and held it between her finger and thumb. “It is this horror,” she said. “I am nearly mad. If you had a future like mine hanging over you, you would be off your head too.”

“Oh, poor Priscie!” said Annie. “I do sympathise – I do really. Your uncle must be a dreadful man. Why, of course you must not leave school; you are cleverer than all the rest of us put together. Mrs Lyttelton thinks no end of you. She is prouder of you than of any other pupil she possesses. Of course you must not go.”

“It is very kind of you to be so sympathetic, Annie, replied Priscilla; person who pays for my schooling is Uncle Josiah. He has paid for it ever since father went back to India, and he doesn’t mean to pay any more. He says so in this letter. He says I am to go back to help Aunt Susan; and if I fail in pleasing her I am to be apprenticed to a country dressmaker. He considers either occupation preferable to that of a teacher. So here I am, Annie, and no one can alter the state of things.”

“But you would give anything in the world to stay, notwithstanding your uncle’s letter?”

“Anything,” cried Priscilla. “I said just now what is true, that I would give ten years of my life; I would be twenty-eight instead of just eighteen, and you know what that means – all one’s youth gone.”

“You must be desperately in earnest,” said Annie, “if you mean that, for of course to be twenty-eight means to be quite an old maid. I do pity you, poor Priscilla!”