The Staying Guest

“I knew your mother,” said Mr. Marshall, as he looked at Ladybird; “but you do not look a bit like her.”

“No,” said Ladybird; “that’s what my aunts told me.”

The two girls spent a long and pleasant afternoon together. Stella showed Ladybird all her books and other treasures, and notwithstanding the difference in their ages, the girls became congenial friends.

As it neared four o’clock Ladybird said she must go home, for her aunt had told her to come at that time.

“I am going over to Primrose Hall,” said Mrs. Marshall, “to the meeting of the Dorcas Circle. You can drive over with me.”

So among the earliest arrivals at the Dorcas meeting were Mrs. Marshall and Miss Ladybird Lovell.

Now that Ladybird’s quick and tempestuous anger had spent itself, she felt sorry to see her Aunt Priscilla arrayed in her second-best black silk, for she knew how it must have hurt that good lady to appear before her guests in anything less than the resplendent glory of her best and cherished black silk gown.

Both the Misses Flint wore a look of sternness that Ladybird could not misinterpret. But they said nothing to the child, and cordially invited Mrs. Marshall to step into the bedroom and lay off her bonnet.

Many successive guests were treated with the same punctilious courtesy.

The Dorcas meeting came, the Dorcas meeting ate its supper, the Dorcas meeting went, and after the door of Primrose Hall had closed behind the last departing guest, Miss Priscilla said:

“Now, Lavinia, I will talk with you, if you please.”

“Good for you, aunty,” said Ladybird, clambering into her Aunt Priscilla’s lap and twining her thin brown arms about the old lady’s neck, thereby – although unconsciously – seriously modifying the tenor of the remarks which Miss Flint had meant to make.

“Lavinia,” she said, with much sternness in her voice.

“Now, aunty,” murmured Ladybird, “please!”

“Lavinia,” went on Miss Flint, unmoved by her niece’s words, “I am more pained than I can tell you at your unkindness to me to-day.”

“Aunty,” said Ladybird, solemnly, “I was more pained than I can tell you at your unkindness to me to-day.”

“But,” said Miss Priscilla, “you must realize, my child, that I am older than you are, and know more.”

“But, aunty,” said Ladybird, “you must realize that I am younger than you are, and care more.”

“Care more for what?” said Miss Priscilla.

“For red spots,” said Ladybird. “Of course I know, Aunt Priscilla, that you have a right to say what kind of horrid old clothes I shall wear; but it seems to me, if I had a little girl to look after, and she wanted to wear red spots, I’d let her wear them. It wouldn’t kill anybody, you know.”

“Priscilla,” said Miss Dorinda, “I think the child is right.”

“I’m not aware, Dorinda,” said the elder Miss Flint, “that I asked your opinion concerning our niece’s conduct.”

“No,” said Miss Dorinda, humbly.

“Aunty,” said Ladybird, still refusing to be pushed from her position on the old lady’s lap, and still with her arms clasped about Miss Priscilla’s stately, if withered, neck, “aunty, are red spots wicked?”

“Not that I know of,” said Priscilla Flint.

“Then don’t you think, aunty, that you might as well have let me keep them, in the first place? Then I wouldn’t have pasted them on your dress; then I wouldn’t have been naughty; and then everything would be lovely, and the goose hang high,” concluded Ladybird, with an airy, careless gesture of her thin, brown, little paws.

“Ladybird,” said Miss Priscilla, and her voice softened as she used the more endearing title, “I am not sure but that you are right in this case. There is no sin in bright colors, and if you want them, I suppose there is no real reason why you should not have them. I am sorry for my part of this unfortunate episode. I was unjust – ”

“Never mind, aunty,” said Ladybird, clasping her arms tighter round the old lady’s throat and kissing her hard, “I was unjust, too, I was naughty, and I was a bad, bad girl, and I – that is, we’re both sorry, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” said Miss Priscilla Flint, “we’re both sorry, and I will get you a new red dress.”

“Do,” said Ladybird, cheerfully: “and get yourself a new black silk one, won’t you, aunty?”

CHAPTER IX

DOING RIGHT

Ladybird hated school. Not the lessons, they were learned quickly enough, and with but little study; but the out-of-doors child grew very restive in the restraint and confinement of the school-room, and her whole touch-and-go nature rebelled at the enforced routine.

Many battles were fought before she consented to go at all; but though Ladybird was strong-willed, Miss Priscilla Flint was also of no pliable nature, and she finally succeeded in convincing her fractious niece that education was desirable as well as inevitable.

So Ladybird went to school – to a small and not far distant district school – whenever she could not get up a successful excuse for staying at home.

With her sun-dial-like capability of marking the bright hours only, she eliminated as much as was possible of the ugly side of school life.

She enjoyed the walks to and from the school-house, across the fields and through the lanes, and she enjoyed them so leisurely that she was a half-hour late nearly every morning, thus escaping the detestable “opening exercises.”

During school hours, when not studying or reciting her lessons she read fairy-tales or else worked out puzzles. Though this was not exactly in line with the teacher’s methods of discipline, yet it was overlooked after several experimental endeavors which showed unmistakably what was the better part of valor.

Also, Ladybird always kept fresh flowers on her desk, and kept lying in her sight any new toy or trinket which she might have recently acquired.

She would have been fairly happy during school hours if she could have had her dog with her; but the teacher’s discretion did not extend as far as this, and so Cloppy was left at home each day to add to the gaiety of Primrose Hall.

One day after he had added gaiety with especial assiduity, Miss Priscilla announced that she was at the end of her rope, and the dog must go.

It happened that Ladybird came in from school that day in an unusually docile frame of mind. To begin with, it was Friday afternoon and the next day was a holiday. Furthermore, she had wrested a good half-hour from the long school afternoon, with its horrid “general exercises,” by the simple method of rising from her seat and walking out at the door. The teacher saw her do this, but allowed her feeling of relief to blunt her sense of duty. Not but what she liked Ladybird: no one could know the child and not like her; but when one is teaching a district school it is easier if the disturbing element be conspicuous by its absence.

And so, with her course unimpeded, Ladybird marched out of school into the fields, and drawing a long breath, sauntered slowly and indirectly home.

“I had a beautiful time,” she announced to her aunts. “There’s the loveliest afternoon outdoors you ever saw, and I’ve walked all around it. Such a big, fair, soft afternoon, and the sunlight is raining down all over it, and it’s full of trees, and sticks, and fences, and dry leaves; and where’s Cloppy? I’m going out in the orchard.”

“Wait a moment, Lavinia,” said Miss Flint, “I wish to talk to you; sit down in your chair.”

“Yes, ’m,” said Ladybird, dropping into a chair suddenly,

“And hurry up your talking
For I want to go a-walking.”

“That will do, Lavinia, I’m in no mood for foolishness; I want to say that that wretched dog of yours cannot stay here any longer.”

“Is that so, aunty?” said Ladybird, with her most exasperating air of polite interest. “Well, now I wonder where we can stay? Would they take us to board down at the hotel? I don’t know. Or perhaps Mrs. Jacobs would take us, if I helped her with the housework and sewing.”

“That is enough nonsense, Lavinia. I tell you that dog is to be put away.”