Page:Scribner's Magazine, Volume 37-0039.jpg

Rh “What fine spring days we are having,” says the Pie, and Mr. Angell said yes, we were. “I wonder that you don’t take your class out of doors on some little sketching tour some day,” says the Pie, just as if he was about six years old and she was his aunt. “I am sure you would benefit in more ways than one;” and she went talking along the way she does, about ten minutes, without saying anything you’d want to hear.

“Why, thank you, that would be very pleasant, Miss Appleby, if there would be no objection, I’m sure,” Mr. Angell said.

“I cannot see how Miss Naldreth could make the slightest objection,” says the Pie; “there would be a teacher, of course, to chaperon them, and there are so many pretty bits about,” and then she went into the gymnasium and he went on by himself.

Well, Ben and Connie came through the hedge and said good afternoon, and sort of walked along with him and talked about drawing—Ben says you don’t have to talk about their classes to the teachers, but we do, of course—and finally he asked them if they thought the young ladies would like to go out in the country sketching, and they said yes, indeed, and Ben said:

“Would one of the teachers go too?”

“Oh, yes,” said he; “why?”

“Then Miss Peck could!” Connie burst right out, and it frightened her so she couldn’t say another word.

“Why, is she so fond of the country?” asked Mr. Angell.

“Not so fond of the country, exactly,” Ben said in an awful hurry, or else she could never have said it at all, “but of—of other things!”

“What do you mean by that?” said Mr. Angell, looking very queerly at her.

Well, she had to go on.

“Of—of—I mean, of you!” she said, sort of gasping. She says it felt as if she had run up a lot of stairs, and she was as red as fire. And Connie too.

“I don’t understand you,” Mr. Angel said; and his voice was quite different, both of them say—low, and very strict.

Now here is a strange thing. Ben was frightened to death—Ben! She says she was going to own up and tell the whole thing, and who do you think stopped her? Why, Connie. She had a kind of feeling what Ben was going to do, and she squeezed her hand hard, and said very fast,

“We—we just thought you might like to know!” and began to run away and dragged Ben with her. And they ran like the wind to a place of safety. Ben says she would never go through that again if nobody ever married anybody in the world. She says if making your own love is anything like making other people’s, she will never, never do it. She says you feel perfectly awful, and yet you have to go on. Her throat got all dry, just like a book. And she and Connie both cried.

They only looked back once and there was Mr. Angell, standing just where they left him, leaning on his umbrella and staring at a tree. He looked strange, but partly pleasant.

Well, you’d think that would have been enough for them, wouldn’t you? And so it was. Ben said that she wouldn’t do another thing about it and that Connie could pay for her buttons by herself, and Connie thought that she’d find some other way of rewarding Miss Peck. But alas! it was of no avail. Would you believe it—they persisted in going on falling in love, long after Ben and Connie stopped!

The very next Thursday Mr. Angell sent up to know if he might take the class out of doors, and Miss Naldreth said yes, and looked it up on the schedule and found out that Miss Peck wasn’t busy, and sent Connie to ask her to please chaperon them! Wasn’t that disgusting?

So Connie had to, and Miss Peck nearly broke her neck hurrying to change her dress; and she pulled her hair out over her ears, too, and really she looked quite pretty. And she blushed, and Mr. Angell blushed, and he had on a new gray suit. Nothing could have been better if Connie hadn’t changed her mind about rewarding Miss Peck that way; but she had, and so it was quite disgusting, as I said. And they talked all the time to each other, and going through the village Miss Peck never noticed the line, and Pinky West and E. Van Horn stopped and had an ice-cream soda and caught up again! What do you think of that?

We went to a kind of a field with a big tree in it and a brook, and lots of the girls had brought candy and things they could get into their pockets, and it was a kind of picnic, though not a good one, as there was,