The Cricket Part 28

So in the end Peggy allowed herself to be persuaded, and went along.

"Silly, spoiled little minx," commented Mr. Benjamin.

"Oh, we'll soon manage her, my dear, but what about this smouldering Isabelle with her old eyes?" sighed his wife.

He patted her hand.

"I leave her to thee, my Phoebe."

Outside the moon rode high, the air was crisp and sweet, the silence unbroken save for the shouts of the girls. The leaves were piled in a huge mound, in a cleared s.p.a.ce some distance from the house. They set a match to it, and the flames leapt hungry and fierce. The girls formed a circle and danced around it, singing. Mr. Benjamin stopped a second on his way to the barn, and called a warning about whirling skirts as he went on.

The circle broke into dancing pairs. Some one started leap frog.

Isabelle forgot everything except that she was having a good time. There were friendliness and joy and freedom. She drank of them to the full.

She played wildly, excitedly. She began to lead in the games. Even Peggy forgot her role and joined in.

The flames were lower now, and with a sudden running leap Isabelle jumped over them. Without hesitation the whole line followed--all except Peggy, who held back.

"Come on, Peggy, don't be a 'fraid-cat!" shouted Isabelle.

So Peggy made a half-hearted jump and landed in the fire. In a second her skirts were ablaze, and the silence of terror struck the girls dumb.

Isabelle ran at Peggy and dragged her out, she threw her on the ground, tearing at her skirt with her bare hands.

"Pile sweaters on her!" she ordered the girls.

They obeyed, and Isabelle threw herself upon the smouldering heap, in an effort to quench the fire. Mr. Benjamin came upon them, and the girls explained in shrill unison. He lifted Isabelle off; picked Peggy up, half unconscious; cut away the still smoking skirt, and carried her into the house.

The girls followed, awed and weak from fright. They sat in silence in the living room awaiting the report from upstairs. Both the Benjamins were up there. There had been no serious damage done. The heavy wool s.h.i.+rt had protected her legs, but the shock had played havoc with poor Peggy's nerves, and she screamed and cried long after she was rubbed, greased, bandaged, and comfortable.

When Mrs. Benjamin finally came downstairs to get some hot milk for her, she found the frightened girls still sitting there. She relieved their minds at once.

"How did it happen?" she inquired.

They explained how Isabelle jumped the blaze and urged timid Peggy to follow.

"Where is Isabelle?" demanded Mrs. Benjamin.

It appeared that n.o.body knew. In the excitement they had not noticed her absence. Should they go and look for her?

"No; I'll find her. Agnes, go to the kitchen and get a gla.s.s of hot milk and take it to Peggy. The rest of you go to bed as quietly as possible.

I will find Isabelle," said Mrs. Benjamin.

They tiptoed away as silent as ghosts. Mrs. Benjamin put a heavy coat about her shoulders, and went out. The clearing where the bonfire had been, lay on a knoll above the house. As she approached it she saw silhouetted against the moon a small figure, head bent upon drawn-up knees, silent, "lonely as a cloud."

"My dear, thee will take thy death of cold," she said gently, leaning over the girl.

She lifted tragic, pitiful eyes to Mrs. Benjamin's.

"Have you come to send me home?"

"No, I've come to take thee to bed,"--simply.

She drew the girl to her feet, put her hand on her shoulder; and together, in silence, they approached the house. She led her to the fire and chaffed her cold hands.

"You ought to punish me," said Isabelle at last.

"My dear, when any one at Hill Top breaks the rules, or acts wilfully, we ask her to punish herself."

Isabelle could scarcely believe her ears.

"I think thee has been sufficiently punished, Isabelle, and now I shall give thee a hot lemonade to warm thee up before thee goes to bed," the kind voice went on.

Suddenly without warning, Isabelle threw herself on the couch and began to sob. Not like a child's easy tears, but like the tortured sobbing of a nature long pent up. Mrs. Benjamin said nothing. She sat down on the couch, drew the child's head into her lap, and let the spasm spend itself.

So it was that Isabelle, who never wept, spent her first evening at Hill Top School.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The period of adjustment to life at the Hill Top School was a very bewildering one to Isabelle. The excitement over Peggy's accident was soon past, to that heroine's intense regret. She prolonged her nervous prostration as long as possible, and was duly petted and made much of by the girls. Isabelle, full of remorse for the trouble she had brought upon her room-mate, adopted her as her special charge.

The routine of the school, if you could call it that, began. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin had strange ideas in regard to the training of the young.

They kept the school small, so that they might not be hampered in their experiments, and strangely enough, they drew their pupils largely from the families of the rich. When he was asked about this once, Mr.

Benjamin said:

"It seems to be our mission to teach these little richlings to

'Ride a c.o.c.k horse, To Banbury Cross, To see what money _can't_ buy!'

"They get life so crookedly from servants and such," he added. "Phoebe and I just try to straighten them out."

The process by which these two rare souls accomplished this straightening out was quite their own. There was only one extra teacher, a Frenchwoman who came from Boston twice a week. For the rest, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin conducted the school, and did all the teaching.

During October and November, and again in late April and May, lessons were all out of doors. The whole school studied Botany and Zoology with Mr. Benjamin. They wandered over the hills, on the brisk autumn days, with their boxes and cases and bottles for specimens. These lessons were a series of enchanted tales to Isabelle, of how the life force persists in bugs and plants. The whole morning on certain days of the week would be devoted to this peripatetic grazing, then note books would be written up before lunch.

This function was also a lesson. Certain girls took charge of it each day--planned, ordered, prepared and cooked the meal, in the open, over a gypsy fire. The girls in charge were limited in expenditure, and there was great rivalry among them to find something new and toothsome to make in the skillet or the big kettle. Careful accounts were kept by each set of managers, and if, at the end of the school term, there was credit balance, a special party was given on the savings.

A second committee took charge of serving the meal; a third, of the clearing away and dishwas.h.i.+ng. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin were always treated as guests on these occasions.

Arithmetic was accompanied by instruction in banking. Allowances were deposited in a central bank, with elected officers. All money was drawn by check. Books were balanced weekly, and penalty imposed upon careless financiers.

Mrs. Benjamin conducted the cla.s.ses in English Literature, and because she loved books truly, she led these girls step by step into the realm of the best. Shakespeare was studied and loved, and played under the trees. Wordsworth and Tennyson and Longfellow read in the open, are very different from Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Longfellow pa.r.s.ed indoors.

Poetry was not a "study" to be pored over in the schoolroom; it was a natural beautiful expression of life, sung instead of spoken. So they came to our modern poets with interest and understanding, because these new poets, forsooth, spoke the language of these children of the present.

d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Victor Hugo, read aloud and discussed; these were a treat--no task--here. These great artists were considered not only as makers of romance, creators of literature, but also as historians of their times. Their books were studied along with the history of the countries and the peoples that they described. Then came the geography of the places wherein the stories were laid, then a study of the social conditions and customs of the periods to which they gave expression.