Rosemary Part 19

CHAPTER XV

TOO MUCH NATURAL HISTORY

When the girls of the Eastsh.o.r.e school reached the seventh grade, they entered the cooking cla.s.s. The white ap.r.o.ns and caps were much coveted and whatever other study might be neglected, each girl usually put her best into the weekly cooking lesson. There was a small stove for each and every young cook was responsible for the order and cleanliness in which her pots and pans and utensils were kept. Woe betide her, if Miss Parsons, the teacher, found an unwashed pan thrust under the sink in a moment of hurry.

"She's very particular," reported Rosemary, the evening after her first lesson in cooking. "She made Nina Edmonds take off her rings and she scolded Elsie Mears because she put her hands up to her hair just once, to tuck it back under her cap."

"And right she is," announced Winnie from the dining-room where she was setting the table for breakfast. "A cook has got no business wearing rings, and I can't abide a girl who is always fussing with her hair when she is handling food."

"Winnie's a member of the sanitary squad," put in Doctor Hugh, smiling behind his newspaper. It was one of the rare times when he had an evening at home.

"Nina Edmonds makes me sick!" said Sarah vehemently. "She screamed when I showed her a darling little spotted snake I found to-day."

Sarah and s.h.i.+rley had brought out the box of dominoes and were playing in the center of the floor. No amount of persuasion had ever induced them to play on a table.

"Don't talk about snakes, dearie," pleaded Aunt Trudy, shuddering over her knitting. "They are such ugly, horrid squirmy things."

"Oh, no they're not Aunt Trudy," said Sarah earnestly. "That's because you're not used to them. Let me show you the one I've got in my pocket--"

To her aunt's horror, Sarah unb.u.t.toned the pocket of her middy blouse and pulled out a little dangling dark object.

"Hugh!" shrieked Aunt Trudy, knocking over her chair as she rose hastily. "Hugh make her stop! Ow! Rosemary, Winnie, take that awful thing away, quick!"

In spite of her sympathy for Aunt Trudy who was white to the lips with fright, Rosemary wanted to laugh, as Sarah, not realizing that her aunt was really in terror, and intent only on winning understanding for her snake, continued to advance on the unhappy lady, the spotted snake dangling from her hand.

"Sarah!" Doctor Hugh managed to halt the march of his determined small sister. "Sarah, take that snake away at once. At once, do you hear me? Aunt Trudy is afraid of snakes."

"Well, she wouldn't be, if she knew about 'em," insisted Sarah. "I only want to show her."

"You can't show her--lots of people are frightened by the sight of snakes," replied the doctor. "Take your snake out of the room this minute."

Still Sarah lingered.

"It's dead," she offered humbly. "A dead snake won't hurt Aunt Trudy will it?"

Doctor Hugh caught Rosemary's eye, and they went off into peals of laughter while poor Aunt Trudy wept and s.h.i.+rley implored Rosemary to tell her what was "funny."

"Take your snake away and bury it, Sarah," said the doctor, when he could speak.

"And don't try to educate your relatives and friends to recognize the virtues of the reptile family; a person either likes snakes or can't abide 'em, and you and Aunt Trudy will never agree on that subject."

"I think you ought to forbid her to ever touch one, or carry one around with her," said Aunt Trudy when Sarah had gone out of the room sorrowfully to borrow a match box from Winnie to serve as a snake-coffin. "The idea of having a snake in one's pocket!"

"You can't separate Sarah and animals," returned Sarah's brother with conviction. "No use trying, Aunt Trudy. All this summer she was crazy on the subject of rabbits and cats and now she seems to have switched to snakes. About all we can do is to keep her within reasonable bounds and trust to luck that before the winter is over she will take up canary birds or something equally pleasing."

Aunt Trudy did not know Sarah's teacher, Miss Ames, but if she had they would have found a common bond of sympathy and interest in their horror of snakes and other unpleasant forms of animal life to which Sarah was devoted. Eleanor Ames was a nervous young woman and she found it distinctly trying to be obliged to divide the interests of her cla.s.s with a shoe-box of baby mice, or to soothe the ruffled feelings of timid little girls who had seen the bright eyes and wriggling slim body of a live snake peeping out of Sarah Willis' coat in the cloak room. Punishment seemed to have no effect on the culprit who stayed after school and cleaned blackboards with disconcerting cheerfulness and Miss Ames was considering the advisability of sending Sarah home with a note asking the co-operation of Doctor Hugh's authority, when something happened that took the matter out of her hands.

Late in October, one frosty morning on her way to school, Sarah made what was to her a great and lucky discovery. s.h.i.+rley and Rosemary had gone on ahead of her, but Winnie had called her back to pick up the clothes she had strewn about her room with her customary careless abandon. Since the opening of school, Aunt Trudy had patiently made beds and put the rooms in order and she would never mention to her favorite Sarah a little matter like slippers in the middle of the rug, bath-robe flung down on the bed and every separate bureau drawer wide open and yawning. This morning Aunt Trudy was going to the city to shop, and the task of bed-making would devolve upon Winnie who had no intention of having her duty complicated by others' neglect. A hasty glance into the room shared by Sarah and s.h.i.+rley, and Winnie had summoned the former, in no uncertain voice, to "come up here and put your clothes away this instant." Sarah, complaining that she would certainly be late for school, had obeyed and if she had hurried could easily have reached the school before the a.s.sembly bell rang.

But crossing a vacant lot, Sarah came upon that which could make her forget school and time. A faint rustle under the dead leaves caught her quick ear and, stooping down, she uncovered a little snake, languid from the cold. Perhaps he had been on his way to winter quarters and the frost had caught him unaware. Anyway, he was numb and Sarah, murmuring affectionate nothings to him, slipped him into her pocket and then spent a valuable ten minutes poking about among the leaves in the hopes of discovering another, believing implicitly that snakes "always go in pairs." However, if the snake had a companion, diligent search failed to uncover it and Sarah was forced to take her reluctant way to school with only one snake to comfort and love. While she was still some distance from the gate she heard the bell ring, and as she reasoned, she was late then, so why should she hurry when it would not save her a tardy mark? Morning exercises were in progress in the auditorium when Sarah entered the building, and she had her cla.s.s room to herself. She hung up her hat and coat and took another peep at the snake. He seemed to be feeling better, but some fresh wave of sympathy led her to regret the necessity for leaving him to spend a lonely morning in the cloak room. With Sarah to think was to act, and she popped the snake into the pocket of her middy blouse, pinning it with a safety pin in lieu of a b.u.t.ton and b.u.t.ton hole. When the cla.s.s returned from the auditorium, she was sitting sedately in her seat and appeared only mildly interested in the lecture on tardiness which followed.

"We'll have the papers distributed on which you worked during the last drawing lesson," announced Miss Ames unexpectedly. "The drawing supervisor will be around next week and we are a lesson or two late, here in our room. Instead of spelling this morning, I'll have you paint the leaves you drew. George Wright, you distribute the papers and Sarah Willis, you know where the paint boxes are."

Sarah was monitor for the drawing materials and she went up and down the aisles, giving each pupil a small paint box and two brushes, while George Wright gave out the papers on which the pencil sketches of autumn leaves had been drawn.

The warmth of the pocket evidently revived the chilled snake and, as Sarah was bending over the desk of Annabel Warde, a dainty little girl about her own age, a lithe green body shot from out Sarah's blouse, wriggled across the desk and dropped to the floor. The safety pin had left too large a loop-hole.

"A snake!" screamed Annabel, flinging her box of paints in one direction and the brushes Sarah had just given her, in the other. "I saw it! I saw it! Miss Ames, I saw a snake, and it's right here in this room. It'll bite us, I know it will and we'll die! Catch it, somebody, Oh, please hurry!"

Jumping up and down and shrieking, Annabel was beside herself with fright. Several other little girls began to scream, too, and the boys rushed around the room shouting that they would catch it and kill it, whatever "it" might be. None of them thought that Annabel had really seen a snake.

"Don't hurt it!" warned Sarah, down on her hands and knees and hunting under the desks for her lost pet. "This kind of snake won't bite any one, and you mustn't hurt it. I want to keep it all winter and watch it grow."

Miss Ames was trying to calm Annabel who persisted in sitting on top of her desk with her feet curled under her, apparently under the delusion that a snake always attacks the ankles first, when George Wright whooped triumphantly.

"I see it--gee, it really is a snake!" he shouted. "Look out, Peter, let me shy this paper-weight at him--there, I'll bet that mashed him into jelly!"

There was a crash as the heavy paper-weight struck the floor and then a small whirlwind landed on the astonished George.

"How dare you try to kill my snake!" panted Sarah, crying with rage.

"He never did anything to you! You're a great, cruel, cowardly boy, that's what you are!"

She was pummeling George unmercifully and he retaliated with interest, forgetting in the excitement and confusion that his antagonist was a girl. But while snakes might temporarily cow Miss Ames, a fight in her room was a situation she knew how to deal with.

"George! Sarah!" she descended upon the combatants and pulled them apart with no gentle hand. "I'm ashamed of you! What can you be thinking of! George, you must know better than to strike a girl, and Sarah, what would your mother say if she knew you were fighting with a boy? Why I never heard of such a thing--never!" and Miss Ames looked as though she never had.

Sarah darted over to the s.p.a.ce behind the atlas table where George had thrown the paper weight. She lifted the gla.s.s cube and picked up the little mashed object under it.

"He's killed it!" she sobbed. "He went and killed my little snake!"

Miss Ames lost her patience which is not to be wondered at, considering the trying half hour she had endured.

"Sarah Willis you march down to the princ.i.p.al's office," she said severely. "And throw that disgusting object in the trash can on your way down. Don't you ever bring another snake, alive or dead, into this room as long as I am the teacher. I want you to tell Mr. Oliver exactly what has occurred here this morning and be sure you explain to him that you fought George simply because he killed that wretched reptile."

Sarah's heart beat uncomfortably fast as she walked down the broad stone steps to the first floor where the princ.i.p.al's office was.

Her cla.s.s room was on the third floor. On the second floor she stopped and wrapped the dead snake in her handkerchief--for a wonder she had one--and when she reached the first floor she studied the pictures hung in the corridor with minutest care.

For once in her short life Sarah was anxious to have time to stand still. Usually exasperatingly indifferent to rebuke or reproval, Miss Ames had hit upon the one punishment that Sarah could be fairly said to dread--an interview with the princ.i.p.al.

She approached the gla.s.s door marked "office" slowly. The door was closed. All the stories she had ever heard of the boys who had been "sent to the office," flashed through her mind. Few girls were ever thus punished and it was a fourth grade tradition that a girl bad enough to need an interview with the princ.i.p.al was always expelled.

Sarah wondered what her brother would say if she came home and said she was expelled. Rosemary would feel the disgrace keenly--no one in the Willis family had even been expelled from school, Sarah was quite sure.

Did you knock, or did you go right in? Was the princ.i.p.al always there? Perhaps he might be away for the day--Sarah devoutly hoped he would be. She shut her eyes tightly, took a firmer grip on the handkerchief containing the dead snake, and knocked on the gla.s.s panel.

"Come in," called a pleasant voice, a woman's voice.

Sarah opened the door and stepped in. She saw a large, sunny room with a desk in the center, and a smaller desk over by the window where a young woman was typing busily.

"Mr. Oliver isn't in, is he?" said Sarah speaking at a gallop. A swift glance had shown her that the young woman was the only person in the room.