Concerning Belinda Part 18

"Well, I've dragged poor Bonita Allen all over the borough of Manhattan and the Bronx and spent many ducats in the process. She has been very polite about it, but just as sad over Sherry's tea hour as over Grant's tomb, and just as cheerful over the Cesnola collection as over the monkey cage at the Zoo. The poor little thing is so unhappy and miserable that she looks like a wild animal in a trap, and I think the best thing we can do with her is to send her home."

"Nonsense," said Miss Lucilla. "Her father is paying eighteen hundred dollars a year."

Belinda was defiant.

"I don't care. He ought to take her home."

"Miss Carewe, you are sentimentalising. One would think you had never seen a homesick girl before."

"She's different from other girls."

"I'll talk with her myself," said Miss Lucilla sternly.

She did, but the situation remained unchanged, and when she next mentioned the Texan problem to Belinda, Miss Lucilla was less positive in her views.

"She's a very strange child, but we must do what we can to carry out her father's wishes."

"_I'd_ send her home," said Belinda.

It was shortly after this that Katharine Holland, who sat beside Bonita at the table, confided to Belinda that that funny little Allen girl didn't eat a thing. The waitress came to Belinda with the same tale, and the Youngest Teacher sought out Bonita and reasoned with her.

"You really must eat, my dear," she urged.

"Why?"

"Why, you'll be ill if you don't."

"How soon?"

Belinda looked dazed.

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"How soon will I be sick?"

"Very soon, I'm afraid," the puzzled teacher answered.

"That's good. I don't feel as if I could wait much longer."

Belinda gasped.

"Do you mean to say you want to be ill?"

"If I get very sick Daddy will come for me."

The teacher looked helplessly at the quiet, great-eyed child, then launched into expostulation, argument, entreaty.

Bonita listened politely and was profoundly unimpressed.

"It's wicked, dear child. It would make your father wretchedly unhappy."

"He'd be awfully unhappy if he understood, anyway. He thinks I'm not really unhappy and that it's his duty to keep me up here and make a lady of me, no matter how lonely he is without me. He wrote me so--but I know he'd be terribly glad if he had a real excuse for taking me home."

Belinda exhausted her own resources and appealed to Miss Lucilla, who stared incredulously over her nose-gla.s.ses and sent for Bonita.

After the interview she called for the Youngest Teacher, and the two failures looked at each other helplessly.

"It's an extraordinary thing," said Miss Lucilla in her most magisterial tone--"a most extraordinary thing. In all my experience I've seen nothing like it. Nothing seems to make the slightest impression upon the child. She's positively crazy."

"You will tell her father to send for her, won't you?"

Miss Lucilla shook her head stubbornly.

"Not at all. It would be the ruination of the child to give in to her whims and bad temper now. If she won't listen to reason she must be allowed to pay for her foolishness. When she gets hungry enough she will eat. It's absurd to talk about a child of twelve having the stoicism to starve herself into an illness just because she is homesick at boarding-school."

Belinda came back to her threadworn argument.

"But Bonita is different, Miss Ryder."

"She's a very stubborn, selfish child," said Miss Ryder resentfully, and turning to her desk she closed the conversation.

Despite discipline, despite pleadings, despite cajolery, Bonita stood firm. Eat she would not, and when, on her way to cla.s.s one morning, the sc.r.a.p of humanity with the set lips and the purple shadows round her eyes fainted quietly, Belinda felt that a masterly inactivity had ceased to be a virtue.

James, the house man, carried the girl upstairs, and the Youngest Teacher put her to bed, where she opened her eyes to look unseeingly at Belinda and then closed them wearily and lay quite still, a limp little creature whose pale face looked pitifully thin and lifeless against the white pillow. The Queer Little Thing's wish had been fulfilled, and illness had come without long delay.

For a moment Belinda looked down at the girl. Then she turned and went swiftly to Miss Ryder's study, her eyes blazing, her mouth so stern that Amelia Bowers, who met her on the stairs, hurried to spread the news that Miss Carewe was "perfectly hopping mad about something."

Once in the presence of the August One the little teacher lost no time in parley.

"Miss Ryder," she said crisply--and at the tone her employer looked up in amazement--"I've told you about Bonita Allen. I've been to you again and again about her. You knew that she was fretting her heart out and half sick, and then you knew that for several days she hasn't been eating a thing. I tried to make you understand that the matter was serious and that something radical needed to be done, but you insisted that the child would come around all right and that we mustn't give in to her. I begged you to send for her father and you said it wasn't necessary. I'm here to take your orders, Miss Ryder, but I can't stand this sort of thing. I know the girl better than any of the rest of you do, and I know it isn't badness that makes her act so. She's different, queer, capable of feeling things the ordinary girl doesn't know. She isn't made for this life. There's something in her that can't endure it.

She's frantic with homesickness, and it's perfectly useless to try to keep her here or make her like other girls. Now she's ill--really ill.

I've just put her to bed, and, honestly, Miss Ryder, if we don't send for her father we'll have a tragedy on our hands. It sounds foolish, but it's true. If n.o.body else telegraphs to Mr. Allen _I'm_ going to do it."

The gauntlet was down. The defiance was hurled, and as Belinda stood waiting for the crash she mentally figured out the amount of money needed for her ticket home; but Miss Ryder was alarmed, and in the spasm of alarm she quite overlooked the mutiny.

"Oh, my dear Miss Carewe. This will never do, never do," she said uncertainly. "It would sound so very badly if it got out--a pupil so unhappy with us that she starved herself into an illness. Oh, no, it would never do. We must take steps at once. I wish the child had stayed in Texas--but who could have foreseen--and eighteen hundred dollars is such an excellent rate. I do dislike exceptions. Rules are so much more satisfactory. Now as a rule----"

"She's an exception," interrupted Belinda. "I'll telephone for the doctor while you are writing the telegram."

"Oh, no, not the doctor. He wouldn't understand the conditions, and he might talk and create a false impression."

"I'll manage all that," Belinda a.s.sured her soothingly. Miss Lucilla Ryder in a panic was a new experience.

When the doctor came there were bright red spots on the Queer Little Thing's cheeks and she was babbling incoherently about prairie flowers and horses and d.i.c.k and Daddy.

"Nerve strain, lack of nourishment, close confinement after an outdoor life," said the doctor gravely. "I'm afraid she's going to be pretty sick, but beef broth and this Daddy and a hope of homegoing will do more for her than medicine. Miss Ryder has made a mistake here, Miss Carewe."

Meanwhile a telegram had gone to Daddy, and the messenger who delivered it heard a volume of picturesque comment that was startling even on a Texas ranch.