The Open Question Part 34

Emmie seemed to Val's overheated imagination to sit and plume herself.

"All the members of your family have been well-mannered and well-conducted people. We leave 'sc.r.a.pes' to others."

Val fell a sudden prey to the old loneliness in the midst of so much family rect.i.tude.

"I am waiting to hear what has happened."

Mrs. Gano folded her blue-veined hands across the open book on her knee.

"Well, I think they mean to expel me."

"Expel you!"

She shut the book with a snap.

"Oh, Miss Appleby's coming to see you," said Val, with overacted indifference. "She'll tell you everything that Emmie hasn't told you already."

"I don't choose to ask Miss Appleby for details that I ought to hear from you."

Val looked at Emmie's curiosity-lighted face and kept silence. Her grandmother understood.

"Run out and play, child; you sit too much in the house," she said to the younger child.

"I've got n.o.body to play with," came from Emmie, not budging.

"Then go and get me some jonquils and narcissuses."

"I've hurt my finger."

"Then take a book and sit in the porch."

"I've read all the books on the juvenile shelf."

"Leave the room!"

Val's heart swelled up in grat.i.tude. It was considerate of her judge not to hold the court of inquiry before Emmie.

"Well," said Val, plunging into the unhappy business the moment the door was closed, "you know how we hate and despise--I mean how we don't like Miss Beach."

"Humph! I dare say Miss Beach doesn't like all her pupils."

"I should think she didn't! She hates us!"

"I don't want to hear such strong expressions. I've nothing to do with the other girls; but it's a bad lookout for you if you haven't earned the respect of an estimable woman like Miss Beach."

"You wouldn't call her that if she gave _you_ unfair marks, and said and _looked_ spiteful things at you."

"Looked! What nonsense are you talking?"

"Well, she"--Val dropped her eyes and crimsoned--"she laughed at my new gymnastic dress." There was a pause. "It _is_ unlike the others."

"Beyond a doubt. Far too good for the purpose. That broche came from Baltima'. Your aunt Valeria never wore it but once. It was as good as new."

"Well, all the other girls wear blue serge, but they never laughed. Miss Beach _did_. Perhaps she didn't mean me to see, but I did."

"Humph! Well?"

"Well, she invents new marches--in-and-out figures, you know--and she only does them once very quickly, and makes me lead off afterwards, and blames me if there's the least mistake. So I--I--just thought the next time she invented something new I'd see if I--I--couldn't make her do it slower. So--well, I collected parlor-matches for a week."

Mrs. Gano's quick movement said, "_That's_ where the matches have gone."

"And I cut off their heads, and I gave some to--three of my friends, and I had a lot myself; and as we marched we threw 'em little by little under Miss Beach's ugly fat--I mean under her feet."

"I'm amazed at you--simply amazed!"

Mrs. Gano's eyebrows had shot up to the middle of her forehead. Val studied for the hundredth time the hairless bony arches above the piercing eyes, and the strange look of the patches of eyebrow sitting up on her forehead in that amazed fas.h.i.+on.

"Well, she _did_ do that new march very slow, stopping and looking round surprised when the matches exploded, and at last she gave up marching altogether, and kind of exploded herself. She _was_ angry, and red too--_purple_, all over her ugly podgy--over her face."

"I don't wonder she blushed for you. I am very much ashamed of you myself. It was the action of a ruffianly street-boy."

"_She_ wasn't ashamed. She was just mad--I mean angry. She asked who had done it, and n.o.body said--"

"I'm not surprised you wanted to hide it."

"Then she said she should get her aunt to suspend the whole cla.s.s; so I had to tell her it was me, and they shut me up in Miss Appleby's room."

"Quite right," said Mrs. Gano, backing up the authorities as usual.

"Oh yes," said Val, bitterly, "that's what Miss Beach thought too; she _said_ it was the only thing to do with a wild beast."

"She didn't use those words!"

The eyebrows suddenly shot up again.

"Yes'm, she did. Ask Julia Otway. Miss Beach'd say _anything_. Why, she was educated at a mixed school."

"You don't mean blacks and whites together?"

"Yes'm--Oberlin."

Mrs. Gano had some ado to recover her rigid att.i.tude of respect for those in authority over her grandchild; but she relaxed the upward tension of her eyebrows and was studying Val straight through her spectacles.

"You can learn manners at home. Miss Beach is quite competent to teach Emmie spelling and you dancing and calisthenics, and her manners are not your business. It is only the young people who are quite perfect themselves who can waste time criticising their elders."

"Yes'm," answered Val, meekly. She was surprised that her crowning misdeed and public disgrace were taken so calmly. "Please, who's going to tell my father I'm expelled?"

"n.o.body is to tell him anything of the sort!" she fired up. "Now that things have come to this pa.s.s I must try to make you understand. We can't go on like this. What you have done to-day would disgrace a street urchin; and yet you are old enough to be a comfort to your father."