26
Α BOARDING- SCHOOL ROMANCE.
The gentlemen had doffed their straw hats at the first approach of the fair students, and remained bareheaded until they had passed. That silly Martha Hemp, the fat girl with the large feet, must attempt to pat the little curly dog that frolicked around the larger one—an attempt so awkwardly made, that the young men involuntarily smiled; and poor Martha had bread and water for her Sunday dinner as a punishment for her forwardness.
Just once had Miss Drummond noticed a sudden start, and an expression almost of fear on the pretty features of Pansy Berks; beyond this, however, she seemed quite unconscious of the admiring glances directed toward her. The girls in the rear had behaved remarkably well; and a pert Miss of twelve, who tried to copy Miss Drummond, and was disliked by the school accordingly, even tossed her head and frowned severely as she passed the strangers.
“That girl,” thought the troubled preceptress, as Pansy came to the dinner-table in the same white dress, and a very becoming shade of paleness on her rounded cheek, “is entirely too pretty; I wish I had known a little more about her before I received her. I must watch her sharply.”
Miss Drummond had cleared her throat, and almost uttered her usual form of address, “Young ladies,” when, hastily recollecting that it might be better to ignore the subject altogether, she skillfully turned her intended speech into something else.
The pretty ones, who had immediately appropriated the lawless glances that so troubled the worthy spinster, indulged in stifled laughter at the failure of their threatened lecture; while the plain ones were quite disappointed that their trifling companions had escaped so easily.
At their afternoon siesta, there were such snatches of conversation as,
“Elegant, I think!”
“Which one, the shorter?”
“No; the one that smiled so saucily.”
“Splendid eyes!”
“So aristocratic!”
“Which is it to be, Pansy?”
“Do hush! there’s one of the teachers!”
“That horrid child!”
“Old drum,” etc., etc.
All this went on in one of the rooms, where three or four rose-buds, doffing their dresses, had tumbled upon the beds to “have a good time.”
Miss Drummond may have suspected something of this, but you cannot hang a person on suspicion; and she preferred taking her own nap to wandering about the corridors on an investigating tour. She had, moreover, the comfortable conviction, based upon her experience in the article of girls, that, if not engaged in this particular manner, they were doing something equally objectionable.
The next morning, Miss Drummond received a fresh shock.
Two cards were brought to her in the school- room, with the announcement that two gentlemen awaited her appearance in the parlor. The shock, however, did not come until she stood face to face with the visitors; for, expecting to see respectable fathers of families, who had called with a view to placing their daughters in her care, she had arranged her mouth in ‘prunes and prism” shape, and entered, with a dignified inclination of her head, to encounter the two worthies who had so boldly regarded her flock the day before.
The cards bore the names of “Frederick Willmore,” and “Clifford Willmore, Jr.,” brothers, she presumed, (Miss Drummond was fond of “presuming,”) and she wondered for which of her lambs they had come to make overtures— such unmitigated brass was equal to anything.
It was plainly written in the lady’s face that she recognized her visitors, and that her voice was still for war; the elder of the two gentlemen, Mr. Frederick Willmore, therefore, took it upon himself to smooth her ruffled plumes as soon as possible.
“I hope,” said he, with great suavity of manner, and a becoming diffidence in the presence of so superior a person, “that Miss Drummond will not consider our visit premature, nor intrusive, when I have explained its object. I think I have not been misinformed, madam, that you are a devoted worshiper at the shrine of science?”
Miss Drummond looked very hard at the speaker; his phraseology was agreeable to her ear, for science was her speciality, a hobby that she rode to the verge of madness, and she had even been complimented with the soubriquet of “the Drummond light;” but she had not expected any allusion of this sort from such a quarter, and, therefore, she looked very hard, indeed, at the gentleman, who seemed to regard her with a mixture of admiration, respect, and diffidence.
He was not at all disagreeable to look at; and although only twenty-three, a slightly bald spot on the top of his head, and an expression of quiet gravity, added at least ten years to his age, and quite destroyed all suspicion of flightiness. His companion was evidently younger,
