LETTERS

When the sleighing party reached home they found hot chocolate and ginger cookies awaiting them. Before retiring, Miss Preston had seen to it that neither shivering nor hungry bodies should be tucked into bed that night.

Five weeks had now sped away, and Toinette was beginning to look upon her new abiding-place as home; at least, it was nearer to it than any she could remember. The old life at the Carter school seemed a sort of nightmare from which she had wakened to find broad daylight and all the miserable fancies dispelled.

She and Cicely were seated at their desks one afternoon. It was half-past four and study hour. Cicely was hard at work upon her algebra lesson, but Toinette was writing a letter. This, she knew quite well, was not what she was supposed to be doing, but the five weeks had not sufficed to undo the mischief done in seven years, and she was writing simply from a spirit of perversity. There was ample time to do it during her hours of freedom, but the very fact of doing it when she knew full well that she ought to be at work on her German added piquancy to the act. Moreover, the letter was to a boy with whom she had become acquainted while at Miss Carter's, and had kept the acquaintance a most profound secret. Not that she cared specially for the boy, although he was a jolly sort of chap, and had been a pleasant companion during their stolen interviews, and often smuggled boxes of candy and other "forbidden fruit" into the girl's possession.

Still, at Miss Carter's a boy sprouting angel's wings would have been regarded in very much the same light as though he were sprouting imp's horns, and any girl caught talking to one--much less corresponding--would have had a very bad quarter of an hour, indeed. So, though she did not care two straws whether she ever saw him again or not, all the wrong-headedness which had been so carefully fostered for the past years delighted in the thought that she was doing something which might not be approved; indeed, from her standpoint, would be decidedly criticised, and to get ahead of a teacher had been the "slogan" of the Carter school.

It was the custom at Sunny Bank for the teachers to go around to the girls' rooms during the study hour to help, suggest, or give a little "boost" over the hummocky places, so when a pleasant voice asked at the door: "Can I help you any, dearies?" Cicely answered from her room:

"Oh, Miss Howard, will you please tell me something about this problem? I am afraid my head is muddled."

"To be sure, I will," was the cheery reply, and Miss Howard pa.s.sed through Toinette's room to Cicely's.

As she did so her dress created a current of air which carried a paper from Toinette's desk almost to her feet. She stooped to pick it up and hand it back to Toinette, who had sprung up to catch it, and, as she handed it to her, Miss Howard noted the telltale color spring into the girl's face.

"Zephyrus is playing you tricks, dear," she said, smiling, and pa.s.sed on to Cicely. After giving her the needed a.s.sistance, she left them, and a little further down the corridor met Miss Preston.

"How are my chicks progressing, Miss Howard?"

"Nicely, Miss Preston. Cicely needed a little help with a problem in algebra, but I think Toinette needs a little of yours in the problem of life," and Miss Howard went her way.

A word to the wise is sufficient.

Meanwhile, the letter was finished, addressed, and slipped into Toinette's pocket, to be mailed later.

Ordinarily, all letters were placed in a small basket to be carried to the office by the porter. As Toinette came down the hall shortly before dinner Miss Preston was just taking the letters from the basket to place them in the porter's mailbag.

"Any mail to go, dear?" she asked.

"No, thank you, Miss Preston," answered Toinette, and, jumping from the last step, ran off down the hall to join Cicely and the other girls. In jumping from the step something jolted from her pocket, but, falling upon the heavy rug at the foot of the stairs, made no sound. As the porter was about to take the pouch from her hands Miss Preston's eyes fell upon the letter, and, supposing it to be one which had been dropped from the basket, stooped to pick it up. She was a quick-witted woman, and the instant she saw the handwriting and the address she drew her own conclusions.

"So that is part of the life problem, is it? Poor little girl, she has got to learn something which the average girl has to unlearn; where they entirely trust their fellow-beings, she entirely distrusts them. I wonder if I shall ever be able to show her the middle path?" Telling the porter to wait a moment, Miss Preston slipped into the library, and, catching up a pencil and slip of paper, wrote down the name and address which was written upon the envelope, then, stepping back to the hall, handed the porter the letter to post.

Toinette joined the girls, and in the lively chatter which ensued forgot all about the letter until several hours later, and then searched for it in every possible and impossible place, but, of course, without finding it, and was in a very _un_comfortable frame of mind for several days, and then something happened which did not serve to rea.s.sure her, for a reply came to her from her correspondent.

How in the world her letter had ever reached him was the question which puzzled her not a little, and she fretted over the thing till she was in a fever. Then she determined to write again to ask how and when the letter had reached him, although she was beginning to wish that boy, letter and all, were at the bottom of the Red Sea, so much had they tormented her. So a second letter was written, and then came the puzzle of getting it into the mail bag unnoticed. At Miss Carter's school all letters had been examined before they were allowed to be mailed, and as Toinette's correspondence was supposed to be limited to the letters she wrote to her father, she had never inquired whether Miss Preston first examined them or not, but, taking it for granted that she did so, handed them to her unsealed. On the other hand, Miss Preston, thinking that it was simply carelessness that they were not, usually sealed them and sent them upon their way.

Although she had not said anything about it, the little affair had by no means pa.s.sed from Miss Preston's thoughts, but she was trying to think of the wisest way of going about it, and was waiting for something to guide her.

"If I can only win her confidence," she said to herself more than once.

CHAPTER XVII

"HAF ANYBODY SEEN MY UMBREL?"

It was the last week in February, and in a few days the school dance was to be given. One afternoon a dozen or more girls were gathered in Ethel's room to see her dress which had been sent out from town. It was as dainty an affair as one could wish to see, and many were the admiring glances cast upon it, and many the praises it received. Possibly it was a trifle elaborate for a girl of fifteen, for it was made of delicate white chiffon over pale yellow satin, and exquisitely embroidered with fine silver threads. But Ethel looked very lovely in it as she preened herself before the mirror, and was fully aware of the fact.

"What are you going to wear, Toinette?" she asked.

"I've never worn anything but white yet," answered Toinette. "At Miss Carter's all my dresses were ordered by Miss Emeline, and she said I ought not to wear anything else till I was eighteen. I hope Miss Preston won't say the same."

"I should think you would have hated to have the teachers say just what you must wear, as well as what you must study. Didn't your father ever send you any clothes?"

"Papa was too far away to know what I wore or did," answered Toinette, rather sadly.

"Aren't you glad he is home again?" asked quiet little Helen Burgess, who somehow always managed to say soothing things when one felt sort of ruffled up without knowing just why.

"You had better believe I am!" was the emphatic reply. "What will you wear, Helen?"

"The same thing I always wear, I guess. I haven't much choice in the matter, you know."

Toinette colored slightly at her thoughtless remark, for she had not paused to think before speaking. All the girls knew that Helen's purse was a very slender one, and that it was only by self-sacrifice and close economy that her parents were able to keep her at such an expensive school. She made no secret of her lack of money, but worked away bravely and cheerfully, always sunny, always happy, with the enviable faculty of invariably saying the right thing at the right time. She had p.r.o.nounced artistic tendencies, and Miss Preston was anxious to encourage them in every possible way. Her great desire was to go to Europe and there see the originals of the famous paintings of which she read. Each year Miss Preston went abroad and took with her several of the girls whose parents could afford such indulgences for them, and Helen longed to be one of them, although she never for a moment hoped to be.

She did really remarkable work for a girl of her age, and was improving all the time, but the trip over the sea seemed as far off as a trip to the moon. Toinette was somewhat of a dilettante, and pottered away with her water-colors with more or less success. But she admired good work, and was quick to see that Helen was a hard student, and to respect her for it.

Although so unlike in disposition, as well as position, a warm regard had sprung up between them, and Toinette spent many hours watching Helen work away at her drawing. The girl's ambition was to ill.u.s.trate, and there was hardly a girl in the school who had not posed for her, and the drawings in her sketch-book were excellent.

Toinette had never been taught to think much about others, and so it is not surprising that, while she admired Helen, and wished that she could have those things she so longed for, it never occurred to her that perhaps there were other and more fortunate girls who might have helped a trifle if they chose to do so. That she, herself, had it within her power to do it never entered her head till the girls began to talk about their new dresses, and what put it there then would be hard to tell. Nevertheless, come it did, and when she heard Helen speak so composedly of wearing to the school dance, _the_ event of the season, in their eyes, the same dress which had done service for many a little entertainment given through the winter, and which gave unmistakable signs of having done so, she realized for the first time what it must mean to be deprived of those things which she had always accepted as a matter of course.

Still, no definite plans took shape in her head regarding it, and it is quite possible that none might ever have done so had not something occurred within a short time which seemed to be the hinge upon which her whole after-life swung.

As the girls were in the midst of their chatter about the new gowns a tap came at the door, and Fraulein Palme looked in to ask:

"Haf anyone seen my umbrel? I haf hunt eferywhere for him, and can't see him anywhere."

"No, Fraulein, we haven't seen it," answered several voices.

"Where did you last have it?" asked Ruth.

"Right away in my room a little while before I am ready to go out. I go down to the post-office and must get wet without him."

Two or three of the girls went into the hall to look for the missing umbrella, and others went back to Fraulein's room with her to make a more exhaustive search. But without success.

"Have you more than one?" asked Edith.

"No, it is but one I haf got. It is very funnee," and poor Fraulein looked sorely perplexed.

"Take mine, Fraulein. Yours will turn up when you least expect it," said Toinette.

"What did it look like, Fraulein?" asked Cicely.

"Chust like thees," was the astonishing answer, as absent-minded Fraulein held forth the missing umbrella, which all that time she had held tightly clasped in her hand, and which had been the cause of Edith's question as to whether she had more than one, for she supposed, of course, that the one Fraulein was so tightly holding must either be one she did not care to carry, or else one she was about to return to someone from whom she had probably borrowed it.