Part 48

"Yes. Well, after talking it over a great deal,--and I suspect many sleepless nights spent by my good father and mother,--it was at last decided that I should be sent to boarding school; for I forgot to tell you, I had finished at the academy."

"Yes; sister was very smart," broke in Miss Anstice proudly--"she won't tell you that; so I must."

"Oh sister, sister," protested Miss Salisbury.

"Yes, she excelled all the boys and girls."

"Did they have boys at that school?" interrupted Philena, in amazement. "Oh, how very nice, Miss Salisbury!"

"I should just love to go to school with boys," declared ever so many of the girls ecstatically.

"Why don't you take boys at our school, Miss Salisbury?" asked Silvia longingly.

Miss Anstice looked quite horrified at the very idea; but Miss Salisbury laughed. "It is not the custom now, my dear, in private schools. In my day--you must remember that was a long time ago--there were academies where girls and boys attended what would be called a high school now."

"Oh!"

"And I went to one in the next town until it was thought best for me to be sent to boarding school."

"And she was very smart; she took all the prizes at the academy, and the principal said--" Miss Anstice was herself brought up quickly by her sister.

"If you interrupt so much, I never shall finish my story, Anstice," she said.

"I want the girls to understand this," said Miss Anstice with decision. "The principal said she was the best educated scholar he had ever seen graduated from Hilltop Academy."

"Well, now if you have finished," said Miss Salisbury, laughing, "I will proceed. So I was despatched by my father to a town about thirty miles away, to a boarding school kept by the widow of a clergyman who had been a college classmate. Well, I was sorry to leave all my young brothers and sisters, you may be sure, while my mother--girls, I haven't even now forgotten the pang it cost me to kiss my mother good-bye."

Miss Salisbury stopped suddenly, and let her gaze wander off to the waving tree-tops; and Miss Anstice fell into a revery that kept her face turned away.

"But it was the only way I could get an education; and you know I could not be fitted for a teacher, which was to be my life work, unless I went; so I stifled all those dreadful feelings which anticipated my homesickness, and pretty soon I found myself in the boarding school."

"How many scholars were there, Miss Salisbury?" asked Laura Page, who was very exact.

"Fifteen girls," said Miss Salisbury.

"Oh dear me, what a little bit of a school!" exclaimed one girl.

"The schools were not as large in those days," said Miss Salisbury. "You must keep in mind the great difference between that time and this, my dear. Well, and when I was once there, I had quite enough to do to keep me from being homesick, I can assure you, through the day; because, in addition to lessons, there was the sewing hour."

"Sewing? Oh my goodness me!" exclaimed Alexia. "You didn't have to sew at that school, did you, Miss Salisbury?"

"I surely did," replied Miss Salisbury, "and very glad I have been, Alexia, that I learned so much in that sewing hour. I have seriously thought, sister and I, of introducing the plan into our school."

"Oh, don't, Miss Salisbury," screamed the girls. "Ple--ase don't make us sew." Some of them jumped to their feet in distress.

"I shall die," declared Alexia tragically, "if we have to sew."

There was such a general gloom settled over the entire party that Miss Salisbury hastened to say, "I don't think, girls, we can do it, because something else equally important would have to be given up to make the time." At which the faces brightened up.

"Well, I was only to stay at this school a year," went on Miss Salisbury, "because, you see, it was as much as my father could do to pay for that time; so it was necessary to use every moment to advantage. So I studied pretty hard; and I presume this is one reason why the incident I am going to tell you about was of such a nature; for I was over-tired, though that should be no excuse," she added hastily.

"Oh sister," said Miss Anstice nervously, "don't tell them that story. I wouldn't."

"It may help them, to have a leaf out of another young person's life, Anstice," said Miss Salisbury, gravely.