Brenda's Ward Part 10

"What's up?" asked Robert.

"What's down?" added Lucian, as a tremendous crash fell on their ears.

"Oh, it's nothing," responded Martine, reddening. She felt Mrs.

Tilworth's keen eye upon her and wished that Priscilla had acted less impulsively. Mrs. Stratford fanned herself nervously. There were disadvantages, she began to think, in apartment housekeeping with a limited staff.

In the meanwhile what had happened? When Angelina went to the kitchen for the ices and cakes, a sorry sight presented itself to her.

The cover of the freezer had been left off,--she had meant it to be but a moment, and not the half hour that had really pa.s.sed. Through her carelessness, not only had the ices begun to soften, but some of the salt and coa.r.s.e ice from the freezer had drifted in.

In her efforts to repair the damage, much time had pa.s.sed before Priscilla appeared. Then Priscilla, in her effort to help, had taken hold of one side of the heavy tin to lift it to the table. The edge was slippery, the tin glided from between Priscilla's fingers, and as it crashed back into the tub of ice, a stream of pink and green stickiness spurted over her new blue gown.

"No matter about me," cried poor Priscilla, as Angelina began to mop off the gown. "I must go back to the dining-room. I can hold my handkerchief over the spots. The dinner mustn't be spoiled. My aunt is so critical."

"But there's no dessert. What will they think?" and Angelina looked the picture of despair. For to her no festivity was complete without the finis.h.i.+ng touch of pink and white ice-cream.

"I will explain," began Priscilla. "Isn't there anything to come but the ices?"

"Oh yes, cakes and fruit and coffee and cheese." Angelina had already recovered her spirit. "I'll hurry in and attach the coffee machine to the electric light; that will divert them, while you make the explanations. It wouldn't be proper for me in my capacity of waitress to say a word."

So Priscilla, hastening back, explained that the ices had met a mishap, and she wondered if they all wondered what her part had been in the misadventure. No one, however, attached as much importance as Angelina did to the loss of the ices. The coffee machine diverted them all. Even Mrs. Tilworth was interested in watching the water bubble in the crystal globe.

Of them all Priscilla alone was disturbed. She realized, when too late, that she must have misunderstood her friend's signals, and that it had been Martine's duty, and not hers, to go to the kitchen. Moreover, she dreaded the merited reproof from her aunt when the spots on her skirt should be discovered.

Mrs. Stratford was amused rather than displeased when Martine, after the departure of their guests, explained the whole matter.

"I realized that something strange was going on, and though Angelina covered herself with glory so far as the cooking was concerned, she certainly did not appear an expert waitress. Then, my dear, if you had only given me a hint of the situation, I need not have perjured myself to Mrs. Tilworth. She thought everything so exquisitely seasoned that I told her all about the cook, how she had lived at Dr. Gostar's and later at Mrs. Rowe's. I admitted that the menu was a little different from what I had expected, but still--"

"Excuse me, mamma--but why do you suppose the cook left?"

To this question Mrs. Stratford had no answer.

CHAPTER VII

A DROP OF INK

"Somehow I find it awfully hard to settle down to work," said Martine to one of the girls at school a day or two after Was.h.i.+ngton's Birthday. "I don't know whether it's the holiday--or what."

"It's 'what,' I think; vacations ought not to hurt us, they are meant to set one up."

"How literal you are! Look at Priscilla; she's as busy as can be. She knows how to study at school; but then of course there couldn't have been anything very exciting in a Plymouth holiday; but although she was away only two days I do wonder that she can study so in school."

"It's a sensible thing, all the same, and saves home study. I begrudge more than an hour a day out of school, and if you don't work here, you surely have to spend three or four hours there."

"You'll have to spend more than an hour a day on home work if you are going to prepare that essay. Isn't it outrageous?"

"Well, it's as fair for one as for another. There's no use in talking about it now; we must keep at this translation." And for the next ten minutes the two girls kept their eyes on their Virgils.

Martine and Grace had gone into a small room off the main schoolroom, where a certain amount of conversation was permitted to two girls who happened to be studying together. They were not expected, however, to wander far from the lesson they had set out to prepare, and idle conversation, if overheard, would have carried a reproof. Yet the special essay to which Grace had referred was for the time uppermost in the minds of most of Miss Crawdon's pupils, and to Martine the necessity for writing it was peculiarly disagreeable; she did not pretend to be literary; her brightness and energy expressed themselves in far different ways. She could talk better than most girls, but when it came to putting her thoughts on paper in an extended form, she was really at sea. No one sympathized with her when she protested that it was absolutely impossible for her to write a ten-page essay on the question "Is the pen mightier than the sword?"

"Why, it's what I call the simplest kind of a subject," said Priscilla.

"We all know that war is a terrible thing and ought to be done away with, and that a good book accomplishes a great deal more than the most famous battle. That's all the subject means."

"Oh, is it?" queried Martine, somewhat sarcastically. "Well, I'd like to see you fill ten large foolscap pages proving it."

"That's easy enough; just get your thoughts together."

"I can get a few of them together, but when it comes to putting them on paper, that's quite another thing."

Yet in the face of Martine's evident despair, Priscilla still insisted that the subject was not difficult, and that if Martine would simply collect her thoughts, she would soon find words to fill ten pages.

"Of course you've got to look up authorities on peace and war and some of the poets like Whittier and Tennyson, and Longfellow's 's.h.i.+p of State,' and say something about 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and look over your English history pretty carefully."

"Oh, Priscilla, with all my other lessons? It's quite natural for you to know where to find all these authorities and poems, but it's quite another thing for me, and there's likely to be some splendid skating this month; and it's odious to have to stay cooped up in the house when the afternoons are short enough at the best."

But at last Martine had to yield to necessity, and less than a week before the day when the essays were to be handed in she sat down for one last, and it may be said first, great effort.

Lucian, happening in from Cambridge, laughed as he saw her forlorn face as she sat at a table littered with papers.

"What a ridiculous fuss," he cried, "about a little composition."

"It isn't a little composition; it's an essay."

"Well, what's the difference? You ought to have daily themes, then you'd know."

"We do, we have them once a week, every Monday morning."

"Daily themes,--once a week!" and again Lucian laughed.

"You needn't laugh, Lucian. Of course it's easy enough to write; that isn't the trouble; but it's getting things together."

"What things?"

"My ideas. Oh, if I were only Priscilla."

"Well, you are not; she's altogether different. But what's this?" cried Lucian, picking up a paper from the table.

"Oh, that's one of Priscilla's last year's essays. It's perfectly splendid, and she thought it might help me to look it over."

"Why don't you get her to help you in some other way?"

"Oh, that wouldn't do. We're supposed to do this all alone. It's a kind of test. You see the little themes are different. We write accounts of things we see, or that somebody tells us; but Miss Crawdon likes things we observe, and I am always seeing something funny. Everyone laughs at what I write. But I just can't do a long logical essay, and I don't want mine to be the very worst in the cla.s.s."

"Of course not." Lucian's tone was more sympathetic than usual. "There can't be any harm in my helping you." And he took up a pencil.