Three Girls from School

“There is no need to tell you. Your punishment, perhaps, is not to know. You have done with Mrs Lyttelton’s school. Turn your face towards the West, dear. Think of the new life and the new, clean, fresh country.”

“Yes, oh yes, I will go – I will go.”

“Then that is settled,” said Saxon, “and I will make immediate preparations.”

On the day before Annie sailed to Canada she was seated in a London hotel. All the packing had been done. There were really no farewells to make. Mabel Lushington had never written to her from the day she had left Zermatt Lady Lushington had doubtless also forgotten her existence. Her school friends, if they thought of Annie Brooke at all, must think of her as one whose name should be spoken with bated breath, who was deceitful, who had gone far astray, and who had finally left her native land because it was best for her to turn her back on England. There was no one for Annie to say farewell to, unless indeed, Priscilla Weir. But she and Priscilla had never been real friends, and was it likely that Priscilla would think of her now? It made her head ache – for she was not nearly as strong as before her illness – even to try to remember Priscilla. She pressed her hand to her forehead. She and John Saxon and her other friends were to start early on the following day.

Just at that moment the room door was opened. The light had not yet been turned on. The days were a little dusky. A tall girl came hurriedly forward. She came straight up to Annie where she sat, dropped on one knee, and took one of her little, cold hands.

“Annie – Annie Brooke,” she said; “I am Priscilla. Have you nothing to say to me?”

Annie looked at her, at first with a sort of terror, then with a softened expression in her blue eyes; then all of a sudden they kindled, there was a smile round her lips, and a radiation spread itself over her wan little face. She flung her arms round Priscilla.

“Oh! Did you know I was going? Have you come to say good-bye?”

“I only heard it to-day from Mr Saxon,” said Priscilla. “Yes, I have come to kiss you, and to tell you that I, in spite of everything, love you.”

“You can’t,” said Annie. “You don’t know.”

“I know everything, Annie. Annie, we have both been in deep waters; we have both sinned, and God has forgiven us both.”

“I am going away,” said Annie restlessly. “When I am in another country I won’t hear that awful text echoing so often.”

“What text, Annie?”

”‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’”

“But it did find you out,” said Priscilla; “and that was the very best thing that could have happened, because then you turned to God; you could not help yourself; and God, who is infinite in His compassion, forgave you.”

“Oh, do you think so – do you think so?” said Annie, beginning to sob. “Priscie, I promised him – my angel uncle, my more than father – to meet him in the home where he is now. Oh Priscie! can I – can I?”

“You will meet him,” said Priscilla, with conviction.

“But, Priscie, do you quite know everything?” Annie, as she spoke, still kept her arms round Priscilla’s neck, and her words were whispered in Priscilla’s ears. “Do you know all about Susan Martin and the poems?”

“Yes,” said Priscilla, “I know. Mr Manchuri is going to help Susan; only, if possible, I should like to have the manuscript book back.”

“I sent it back to Susan herself with a letter. I did that to-day,” said Annie. “It seemed the very last thing left, the final drop in my cap of humiliation.”

“I am so glad,” said Priscilla. “Mr Manchuri will help Susan. She is going to be educated, and will give up dressmaking.”

“Who is Mr Manchuri? I seem to know his name and yet to have forgotten him,” said Annie.

“Oh Annie, dear Annie! he belongs to my story. He took me home that time from Interlaken; and – and I resemble a girl of his who died; and since then, ever since then, I have been living with him and looking after him, and he has finally arranged that I am always to stay with him as his adopted daughter. I am not going to school any more, but I am being taught – oh! in many and wonderful ways – by my dear, dear friend Mr Manchuri himself, by the beautiful picture of the girl who went to God and whom I am supposed to resemble; and I have books as many as I want, and – oh, I, who have sinned too, am happy, very happy!”

“And what about Mabel?” said Annie.

“Lady Lushington knows all about Mabel. Everybody knows about everything, Annie. Mabel is to stay at a school in Paris for a year. It is a good thing for her, too, that things have been found out Annie, I don’t think you need fear that text any more.”

“You comfort me,” said Annie. “Oh! sometimes, Priscilla, when you pray to God, ask Him to give me a clean heart, and to renew a right spirit within me.”

The End