Blue Bonnet in Boston Part 25

Blue Bonnet saw! She also had visions of Aunt Lucinda if the gown were torn or stepped on, but she couldn't be disagreeable and selfish. She followed the girls on in to Annabel's room.

Sue pushed Blue Bonnet into a chair and began taking the bow off her hair.

"I've been wild to get at your hair ever since I first saw you. You're too old to wear it in a braid. Here, give this ribbon to Carita; she's in the infant cla.s.s yet."

Annabel opened a box of chocolates and curled up comfortably on the couch, from which vantage she watched operations lazily.

"Part it, Sue," she said, studying Blue Bonnet's face. "She has a heavenly nose for it--real patrician. Didn't any one ever tell you that you ought to wear it parted?"

"No--I can't remember that any one ever did."

"How funny! Your face is made for it."

Sue brushed the soft fly-away hair, coiling it low over the ears and twisting it into a becoming knot on the neck.

Annabel clapped her hands with delight.

"Didn't I tell you?" she said. "Here, take this mirror. Isn't it splendid? Why, it makes you look all of twenty. You could go to a Harvard dance and get your program filled in two minutes with your hair like that!"

Blue Bonnet took the mirror and looked at herself from all angles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BLUE BONNET TOOK THE MIRROR AND LOOKED AT HERSELF FROM ALL ANGLES."]

"It is rather nice," she said, and a rosy flush stole into her cheeks.

"But Aunt Lucinda would never stand for it. I know she wouldn't!"

"Change it when you go home then. But you are too old for hair-ribbons--really you are. Isn't she, Sue?"

Sue thought so--decidedly.

Blue Bonnet picked up the ribbon Annabel had so scorned and smoothed out its wrinkles gently. She hated to give it up, somehow; it linked her to her childhood. She wasn't half as anxious to grow up as Annabel was. She didn't want to look twenty--yet! There was so much time to be a woman.

The five o'clock gong sounded.

Blue Bonnet picked up her things and started for her room.

"Wait--the dress," Annabel said. She got out the pink organdy.

Blue Bonnet glanced at it shyly.

"If you don't mind, I believe I'll wear my own."

Annabel looked hurt.

"All right, if you feel that way, of course. Then we won't wear yours."

She handed Blue Bonnet the Peter Thompson.

"Oh, yes, you will--please do! You are quite welcome. I only thought--- I--you see, I have never worn anybody's clothes in my life. It seems so funny--"

Sue came to the rescue.

"Nonsense. You'll get over that. You can't be so particular in boarding-school. Everybody does it. If Annabel doesn't care, why should you?"

Blue Bonnet took the dress and went to her room. When the gong sounded for dinner she emerged, radiant in the pink organdy. A critical observer might have thought the waist line a trifle too high, and the skirt a wee bit short. Of the becomingness, however, there could be no doubt. The gown was pretty, and it suited Blue Bonnet, bringing out the wild rose coloring in the face that glowed and dimpled above it.

Miss North bore the reputation in the school, with pupils and teachers, of being just. She was often accused of being severe--of being cross; of being too strict; but even those who cared for her the least had to acknowledge her general fairness.

Therefore, although it may have been in her heart to pardon Blue Bonnet unreservedly, she felt that a punishment was due her; and she proceeded to mete out that punishment in full accordance with the offence. Blue Bonnet's privileges were taken away for a week. That meant she could have no communication with the girls outside of school hours. She could not visit during the chatting hour; she was denied shopping expeditions--even the Friday afternoon Symphony concert; which was, perhaps, the hardest thing to bear, because Blue Bonnet loved music.

Severe? Yes, perhaps; but nothing could have served half so well to give the girl a proper regard for authority and self government. Blue Bonnet finished the week happier for having expiated her treason to school law--ready to begin the next week with the slate wiped clean.

The week slipped by quickly, too, as weeks have a habit of doing. There were other things beside visiting with the girls and dancing in the gymnasium after dinner. There was the half hour every day just after lunch when Miss North read to the girls in the study hall--a half hour Blue Bonnet always looked forward to eagerly. Miss North was an excellent reader, as well as a keen critic. She read from the poets usually,--Shakespeare, Tennyson, Browning,--though sometimes, by way of variety, an essay or modern drama was subst.i.tuted.

Miss North felt the pulse of her audience by instinct. She could tell without so much as a glance who was giving attention and who was indifferent. She had a habit of pointing a long, slender finger at some particular girl, and asking for an explanation of what she had been reading.

Blue Bonnet's strict attention pleased her. She liked the girl's appreciation of good literature and her ability to fathom difficult pa.s.sages.

"Give me the text of 'A Grammarian's Funeral,'" she said to Blue Bonnet one day during this week of penance, after finis.h.i.+ng the poem. She knew that she was asking a difficult thing; but she wanted to test Blue Bonnet's perception--her mental acuteness.

"You mean tell what it is about?" Blue Bonnet asked.

"Exactly, Miss Ashe."

"Well--" Blue Bonnet halted lamely for a second, "I couldn't understand it--that is, all of it--but I think it's about some students taking the body of their teacher up a mountain to bury it--and singing as they went."

Miss North smiled and a laugh went round the room.

Blue Bonnet sank down in her seat, covered with confusion, totally unaware that she had said anything that might be regarded as funny. She looked up in surprise, her cheeks flaming.

Miss North explained.

"You have the idea, Miss Ashe. It amuses the cla.s.s to think of students singing as they bury their teacher, though I daresay there might be more truth than poetry in it."

There was no sarcasm in her tones. She laughed with the rest. Blue Bonnet's attention had delighted her.

There had been another pleasure during the week, one that Blue Bonnet greatly appreciated. She was allowed ten minutes with Carita in the Infirmary.

Carita was sitting up--her long hair brushed and braided smartly; her face--still a bit white--wreathed in smiles.

Blue Bonnet hovered over her.

"Have you been awfully lonely, Carita?"

"No--not a bit."

"Really?"