"Not now," responded Brenda, "but by and by, next week, perhaps you shall have a little money to spend, and some of it we may spend for you to take you to the country, you know."

"Come, Brenda," said Nora, "we must not stay too long, if the children are not to be back until five o'clock, we cannot wait to see them. We ought to be watching for Marie now."

"I know, I know," retorted Brenda, impatiently, "I shall be ready when you are."

"If I could just have this money in the house for a little while," said Mrs. Rosa, with her quaint accent, "I should be so happy. I think it would make me sleep. I haven't slept for _so_ long," and she sighed and looked paler than ever.

"Poor thing," said Brenda, "I wish that I could give it to you now.

Indeed I do not know why I should not, it is certainly yours, and I do not care for the responsibility myself,"--this speciously, for Brenda knew perfectly well that her father stood ready to take care of the money.

"Nora," she called rather sharply, "I think that we ought to let Mrs.

Rosa have this money until we are ready to spend it. It is really hers now, people would not have come to the Bazaar, except to help the Rosas."

"Now, Brenda," cried Nora, "don't be foolish. I cannot imagine your doing so crazy a thing. It was bad enough for you to have brought the money down here. It was an awful risk, for suppose you had lost the purse,--oh, my," with a change of tone, "why there is Manuel. I must run out and speak to him," and in her usual heedless way Nora left the room with little thought for the subject which she and Brenda had the moment before been discussing.

Left alone with Mrs. Rosa, Brenda felt an increase of pity for the poor, pale woman, who looked as if she had very little more time to live. As she handled the bills with feverish fingers, Brenda made a quick resolve.

"Why should I not give her a pleasure that will cost me so little, and I am sure that no reasonable person can object.

"Mrs. Rosa," she said, leaning forward, "if I should let you keep that money for a few days, would you promise not to let the children see it.

You must keep it right in this purse, and never let it out of your sight. I mean when any one is here you must keep it under your pillow, though of course when you are alone you can look at it."

Mrs. Rosa smiled gratefully, and Brenda taking the bills began to put them back in her portemonnaie. "I think," she said reflectively, "that I will keep one of these bills in case there are special things that Miss South or Julia may have planned for you." She could afford to be liberal in her feelings now that she was getting ready to do something that in the bottom of her heart she knew that the others who were interested in Mrs. Rosa would not approve. So she tied up the one hundred dollar bill, that she intended to keep, in a corner of her handkerchief, and placed it carefully in the bottom of her bag.

"Remember," she said, as she handed the little purse to Mrs. Rosa, "remember that you are not to spend this."

"O, I remember, I promise, miss," responded Mrs. Rosa, and just at this moment Nora reopened the door.

"Come, Brenda," she said, "Marie is outside waiting, and we ought to start for home at once. Good-bye, Mrs. Rosa, I suppose we shall hardly see you again in this uncomfortable room. Come on, Brenda, how long it takes you to put your gloves on!"

Brenda, of course was greatly relieved that Nora asked not another word about the money. But all the same her conscience had begun to trouble her, and after she reached home could she have thought of any way to do it, without betraying herself, she would have sent down to Mrs. Rosa's for the purse and its contents. On Sunday, at least in the morning, she had felt rea.s.sured.

"What possibility," she thought, "is there that anything could happen to the money. There might be a fire at the North End, but so there might be at the Back Bay. Perhaps she ought to have let her father put it in the bank. Well on Monday morning she would go down, perhaps before school if she could wake early enough. But on Sunday it was out of the question."

So she had reasoned until Sunday afternoon. Then as she heard Julia tell what Miss South had said to her, she became very nervous.

"Oh, dear," she thought. "Oh, dear, what _shall_ I do if anything has happened to that money?"

XXIX

AFTER VACATION

On Monday morning as might have been expected, Brenda did not awake very early, and though she had a few uneasy minutes as she thought of Mrs.

Rosa, on the whole she was too much absorbed by her preparations for school to worry over what had now become a very unpleasant subject to her.

At school all was bustle and excitement for the quarter hour preceding the opening. Some of the girls had been in New York, or even as far as Washington during the vacation, and they had much to tell of their doings. Even those girls who had remained in Boston had had very exciting experiences, or at least this seemed to have been the case judging by the eager tones in which they talked, and the effort of each girl to make herself heard above all the others. If there had been nothing else eventful among the girls of the set to which The Four belonged, the Bazaar would have afforded abundant food for discussion.

Even the older girls were interested in this affair, and felt proud of the success of their schoolmates. This morning, too, was an exciting one at the school, because it marked the beginning of the spring term--the last term of regular school for several of Miss Crawdon's pupils, who next year were to take their place in society. Already in their spring gowns, modeled after the styles of their elders, they looked like young women, and their sweeping skirts and elaborate hats seemed to put a gulf between them and their younger companions. Among the girls of intermediate age there was also a special reason for dreading the spring term, for during the few remaining weeks, two or three of them besides Ruth and Julia were to concentrate all their energy on preparation for the preliminary college examinations. Not all of these girls were likely to go to college, but Miss Crawdon had encouraged them to prepare for the examinations, hoping that their success in pa.s.sing them might lead them eventually to take the college course.

Even these girls, the less frivolous in the school, were chattering,--or perhaps I should say talking--as eagerly as the others. They had many little points to talk over regarding the requirements for college, the special tutoring they might need, and similar things. Julia, although she had been conscientious in her work during the winter, really did dread the coming ordeal. Examinations of any kind were new to her, for until the past winter her studies had always been carried on in an individual way. It was still a sore point with Brenda that Julia should think of going to college. She felt certain that teaching was her cousin's ultimate aim, and she did not like the idea at all. A few years before this Brenda had been remarkably free from anything resembling sn.o.bbishness. This may have been partly on account of her youth, although a more probable reason was that she had not in her earliest days so many sn.o.bbish friends to influence her. For in spite of her intimacy with Nora and Edith, Brenda permitted herself to be too greatly influenced by Belle. Frances Pounder, too, was only one of a group of girls much less simple-minded than Brenda, whom the latter had come to a.s.sociate with rather closely. Any one of them would have indignantly denied a special regard for money. They would have been pained had you said that they made wealth a consideration in choosing their friends.

Yet this was what it amounted to,--their way of cavilling at those who did not belong to their set. They said that family was the only consideration with them. But I doubt that a very poor girl, however good her family, would have been considered by them as welcome as a richer girl of poorer family. There was Julia, for example, who had in every way as strong a claim to consideration as Brenda--for were not the two cousins? Yet Frances invariably had some little supercilious thing to say about Julia--except in the presence of Nora and Edith--and the superciliousness came largely from the fact that she regarded Julia as a poor relation of the Barlows. "She can never be of any great use,"

Frances had reasoned, "to us;" including in the latter term all the girls with whom she was intimate, "and therefore what is the good in pretending to be fond of a strong-minded girl who may in a few years be a teacher in a public school? I honestly think that she would just as soon as not teach in a public school, Brenda, for I heard her praising public schools to the sky the other day. I'm sure I wonder that she does not go to a public school instead of to Miss Crawdon's. It would save your father and mother a lot of money," concluded Frances, forgetting that how Mr. and Mrs. Barlow spent their money was really no concern of hers. At times Frances laid aside her good manners. Brenda never knew just how to respond to speeches of this kind, and their chief effect was a little feeling of irritation that a cousin of hers should have put herself in this position of being cla.s.sed with mere wage-earners. Brenda was no longer jealous of Julia in the ordinary sense. She had begun to lose the childish pettishness of her earlier years. Observation was teaching her that even in the one household there could be room for two girls near the same age, and that any privileges or affection accorded Julia did not interfere with her own rights. Indeed had she been perfectly honest with herself she would have admitted that Julia's companionship during the past winter had really been of great value to her. If any one were to tell her that Julia was not to be in the house with her another year, she would have admitted that she would be lonely.

In spite of the childishness which Brenda sometimes showed towards her cousin, the two girls saw a great deal of each other, and Brenda had lately acquired the habit of slipping into her cousin's room on her way up and downstairs to talk over little happenings of one kind or another.

But at school on this bright spring morning, Brenda felt some irritation at the sight of Julia and Ruth in close consultation with the Greek teacher. "He has such sharp eyes," whispered Frances, as she and Brenda pa.s.sed him in the hallway. "Don't you feel as if he were always looking right through you, and saying, 'you're a little ignoramus; every one is who does not study Greek with me.'"

"Oh, how tiresome you are, Frances," responded Brenda crossly; "I dare say Miss Crawdon will say that, too, in the English cla.s.s at the close of the next hour unless you have a better composition than I have."

"Why, Brenda Barlow, I had forgotten all about it, and we were expected to have it ready this morning. Have you written yours?"

"No," replied Brenda, "I forgot mine, too. There were so many other things to think of last week."

It happened, naturally enough, that Brenda and Frances and several other girls who had neglected their compositions in the same way received a reprimand from Miss Crawdon, who thereupon said,

"Since so little English written work has been handed in to-day, I will submit a composition of my own to you for criticism. It is very simple, and consists merely of a brief description of an evening party, supposed to be the work of a girl of about your age.

"Now listen, 'I have seldom had so nice a time as at Clara Gordon's party. In the first place the house is a particularly nice one, and the room where we danced has the nicest floor for waltzing that I ever saw.

Then there were so many nice people there, all the girls and young men whom I know especially well, and some others from out of town. The orchestra played divinely. I never heard nicer music, and John Brent, my partner in the German, was just as nice to me as he could be. I wish that I could describe the nice supper that we had at nice little tables in the dining-room. There was every imaginable kind of nice thing, ices, salads, and cakes. The sherbet was so nice that some persons who sat down late could not get any. It was all gone. I got along very nicely, for John Brent looked out for me. I have not told you about the dresses, but they were all so nice that it is hard to say which was the nicest. I danced until I could hardly stand, for I was determined not to miss a single dance, but when my aunt tried to urge me to go home before twelve o'clock so that I wouldn't be tired to death, I wouldn't give in for a moment, but told her that I felt quite nicely.'

"There," said Miss Crawdon, "this is a longer composition than many of you have prepared to-day, and mine is voluntary, while many of you have failed to carry out what was really a command laid upon you. What do you think of my composition?"

While she was reading, some of the girls had rubbed their eyes in amazement. It did not take even the duller very long however to see that Miss Crawdon had been playing a practical joke upon them. She had always had a great deal to say to them on the necessity of a wide vocabulary, and she had been particularly severe towards those girls who made the adjective "nice" take the place of more expressive words. "You noticed, perhaps," continued Miss Crawdon, "that I have not been extravagant in the matter of adjectives, at least I have been extravagant in the use of only one, for I have been able to make 'nice' serve in almost every instance where an adjective was needed, and in none of these instances was it used in its own proper sense."

Those girls who had not previously seen the joke, now glanced at one another in amazement. Yes, it really was a practical joke, this little composition by Miss Crawdon, and they had only begun to find it out.

Then Miss Crawdon spoke again.

"I will not pretend that my composition has cost me much effort. Indeed, I only wrote it here in school in the few minutes at my disposal before the opening hour. I need not say also that it is the result of a few hastily jotted notes, based on sc.r.a.ps of conversation which came to me as I pa.s.sed various groups of my pupils, at recess or before school.

But, seriously," and all eyes were fixed on her, "I do wish that you would avoid the word 'nice' altogether for the present, unless you can resist the temptation to make it do duty on all occasions. Now, hoping that you will take this lesson to heart, I will leave you to Miss South, who will talk to you for a quarter of an hour on the subject of letter writing."

Thereupon Miss South took Miss Crawdon's place, and the girls had no opportunity to exchange opinions regarding Miss Crawdon's humorous, if brief, essay.

Miss Crawdon and Miss South were joint teachers of this cla.s.s in English. Miss South had charge of it oftener than Miss Crawdon. But the latter had general supervision of it, and as the first hour of certain mornings was given to it, occasionally Miss South was permitted to arrive at school a little late, while Miss Crawdon took her place. When Miss South was late it was not on account of any dilatoriness of her own; it was usually business of Miss Crawdon's that detained her--for she was Miss Crawdon's trusted friend--and she often had to go to the bank, or to hold an interview with an anxious parent, or to do some other thing by which Miss Crawdon might be spared care or unnecessary steps.

On this special Monday morning, however, Miss South was not only late, but she looked a little worried. Many of the girls had heard of the newly discovered relationship between her and Madame Du Launy, and in the quarter hour before school, the story of the discovery, with a few slight variations from accuracy, had been talked over very freely. When Miss South did not appear to take charge of the English cla.s.s, most of her pupils a.s.sumed that she was no longer to be a teacher at Miss Crawdon's. They were therefore astonished when she entered the room, as ready to a.s.sume her school duties as if she had had no change of fortune.

Yet, as I have said, Miss South looked a little worried, and her glance wandered two or three times in the direction of Brenda in a way that caused Brenda's conscience to rea.s.sert itself.

"Oh, dear," she thought, "what shall I do if Miss South has heard about that money? Of course it is no concern of hers, but still, but still----"

Now Brenda did not know exactly what she dreaded, for her idea of the value of money was very vague. She only knew that she had not done right in leaving the two hundred dollars with Mrs. Rosa. Yet she consoled herself with the reflection, "At any rate I have a third of that money safe at home, and that is a great deal to have saved, if anything has happened to the rest."

Nora, too, had come late to school, though Brenda had been too much carried away by the excitement of seeing the other girls again to notice this. Later in the morning Nora slipped into her accustomed place, and her face, too, though Brenda had not observed it, looked a little more serious than usual.

It was not until the end of school that the storm burst. At recess Nora, contrary to her usual custom, had remained at her desk studying. But after school she ran up to Brenda, with an "Oh, how _could_ you, Brenda?

We have lost almost the whole advantage from the Bazaar! Miss South and I were down at the Rosas this morning--I promised not to say anything to you, until after school--and, well, Miss South will tell you. I can't bear to talk about it."