Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/70

36

Clang-bang It was the gong for change of class, and we filed out into the hall, the quietest class I ever beheld, We looked so queer that the girls from the other class-room came crowding around to know what on earth had happened, and we were in no mood for telling just then. But by evening it was different. It was Friday, and Miss Noble made chocolate for us in her room at nine o’clock—no dress-up oceasion, just a kimono-and-slippers function, where each girl provides her own cup and saucer, and afterward washes the same. Of course the whole conversation was about Little X, and what in the world was to be done about it. And, as if things were n’t bad enough already, Miss Noble told us something that made me feel meaner than an angleworm in a zoölogy tin pan. She said the reason she had n’t told us before was that she thought it would be a great deal better for all concerned if we should be nice to Little X just naturally, and not because we knew all about it; and Miss Noble said that girls are so silly she was afraid we ’d think Little X queer—crazy, I mean—if she told us.

She said that Mr. Prentiss had told Miss Brathwaite all about it. Little X had been a very bright, jolly sort of girl until the summer before, when she had had a dreadful attack of typhoid fever. She was a long time getting well—and even now she is n’t nearly so strong as she looks, and needs some one to keep looking after her. When she did recover she was different. ‘They did n’t discover it at once, and when they did they felt perfectly awful about it—her family, I mean. Little X was just as bright as she had been before, but she was queer and quiet and melancholy, like another person, The doctor advised a complete change, and so her father brought her East to this school where the girls are supposed to be particularly jolly and healthy and happy, and he hoped she ’d get right into the life and come to be her own old self once more.

I don’t ever want to feel again the way I did when Miss Noble finished her remarks, Judy, however, was argumentative, as usual.

“But, Miss Noble, what can we do? She just won't be friendly. We ‘ve tried.”

“It will be hard,” said Miss Noble.

Just then I felt a sudden stiffening inside. I groaned inwardly, but outwardly I said, “I must go up to the nursery before it ’s shut up, to get some medicine for my cold.” Then I pulled myself up and pushed myself out of the door; you see, I knew I was going to be it—that I was going to make Natalie Prentiss talk. I went to the nursery, but that did n’t take long. Cass was safe in Miss Noble's room.