Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/117

 “It would have gone hard with some girls but Mr. Hardy is a friend of Dr. Burnley’s. Besides, there is something about those yellow eyes of Ilse’s that do things to you. I know exactly how she would look at Mr. Hardy after she had smashed the vase. All her rage would be gone and her eyes would be laughing and daring—impudent, Aunt Ruth would call it. Mr. Hardy merely told her she was acting like a baby and would have to pay for the vase, since it was school property. That rather squelched Ilse; she thought it a tame ending to her heroics.

“I scolded her roundly. Really, somebody to bring Ilse up and nobody but me seems to feel any responsibility in the matter. Dr. Burnley will just roar with laughter when she tells him. But I might as well have scolded the Wind Woman. Ilse just laughed and hugged me.

“‘Honey, it made such a jolly smash. When I heard it I wasn’t a bit mad any more.’

“Ilse recited at our school concert last week and everybody thought her wonderful.

“Aunt Ruth told me today that she expected me to be a star pupil. She wasn’t punning on my name—oh, no, Aunt Ruth hasn’t a nodding acquaintance with puns. All the pupils who make ninety per cent. average at the Christmas exams and do not fall below eighty in any subject are called ‘Star’ pupils and are given a gold star-pin to wear for the rest of the term. It is a coveted distinction and of course not many win it. If I fail Aunt Ruth will rub it in to the bone. I must fail.

“October 30, 19—

“The November came out today. I sent my owl poem in to the editor a week ago but he didn’t use it. And he use one of Evelyn Blake’s—a silly, simpering little rhyme about —very much the sort of thing  wrote three years ago.

“And Evelyn with me before the whole room-