Part 49

"Well, but--"

"And so, every time when I thought I must give up and go home, I was so hungry to see my father and mother, and the little ones--"

"Was Miss Anstice one of the little ones?" asked Fanny, with a curious look at the crow's-feet and faded eyes of the younger Miss Salisbury.

"Yes, she was: there were two boys came in between; then Anstice, then Jane, Harriett, Lemuel, and the baby."

"Oh my!" gasped Alexia, tumbling over into Polly Pepper's lap.

"Eight of us; so you see, it would never do for the one who was having so much money spent upon her, to waste a single penny of it. When I once got to teaching, I was to pay it all back."

"And did you--did you?" demanded curious Fanny.

"Did she?--oh, girls!" It was Miss Anstice who almost gasped this, making every girl turn around.

"Never mind," Miss Salisbury telegraphed over their heads, to "sister," which kept her silent. But she meant to tell sometime.

Polly Pepper, all this time, hadn't moved, but sat with hands folded in her lap. What if she had given up and flown home to Mamsie and the little brown house before Mr. King discovered her homesickness and brought Phronsie! Supposing she hadn't gone in the old stagecoach that day when she first left Badgertown to visit in Jasper's home! Just supposing it! She turned quite pale, and held her breath, while Miss Salisbury proceeded.

"And now comes the incident that occurred during that boarding-school year, that I have intended for some time to tell you girls, because it may perhaps help you in some experience where you will need the very quality that I lacked on that occasion."

"Oh sister!" expostulated Miss Anstice.

"It was a midwinter day, cold and clear and piercing." Miss Salisbury shivered a bit, and drew the shawl put across the back of her stone seat, closer around her. "Mrs. Ferguson--that was the name of the principal--had given the girls a holiday to take them to a neighboring town; there was to be a concert, I remember, and some other treats; and the scholars were, as you would say, 'perfectly wild to go,'" and she smiled indulgently at her rapt audience. "Well, I was not going."

"Oh Miss Salisbury!" exclaimed Amy Garrett in sorrow, as if the disappointment were not forty years in the background.

"No. I decided it was not best for me to take the money, although my father had written me that I could, when the holiday had been planned some time before. And besides, I thought I could do some extra studying ahead while the girls were away. Understand, I didn't really think of doing wrong then; although afterward I did the wrong thing."

"Sister!" reproved Miss Anstice. She could not sit still now, but got out of her stone chair, and paced up and down.

"No; I did not dream that in a little while after the party had started, I should be so sorely tempted, and the idea would enter my head to do the wrong thing. But so it was. I was studying, I remember, my philosophy lesson for some days ahead, when suddenly, as plainly as if letters of light were written down the page, it flashed upon my mind, 'Why don't I go home to-day? I can get back to-night, and no one will know it; at least, not until I am back again, and no harm done.' And without waiting to think it out, I clapped to my book, tossed it on the table, and ran to get my poor little purse out of the bureau drawer."

The girls, in their eagerness not to lose a word, crowded close to Miss Salisbury's knees, forgetting that she wasn't a girl with them.

"I had quite enough money, I could see, to take me home and back on the cars, and by the stage."

"The stage?" repeated Alexia faintly.

"Yes; you must remember that this time of which I am telling you was many, many years back. Besides, in some country places, it is still the only mode of conveyance used."

Polly Pepper drew a long breath. Dear old Badgertown, and Mr. Tisbett's stage. She could see it now, as it looked when the Five Little Peppers would run to the windows of the little brown house to watch it go lumbering by, and to hear the old stage-driver crack his whip in greeting!

"The housekeeper had a day off, to go to her daughter's, so that helped my plan along," Miss Salisbury was saying. "Well would it have been for me if the conditions had been less easy. But I must hasten. I have told you that I did not pause to think; that was my trouble in those days: I acted on impulse often, as schoolgirls are apt perhaps to do, and so I was not ready to stand this sudden temptation. I tied on my bonnet, gathered up my little purse tightly in my hand; and although the day was cold, the sun was shining brightly, and my heart was so full of hope and anticipation that I scarcely thought of what I was doing, as I took a thin little jacket instead of the warm cloak my mother had made me for winter wear. I hurried out of the house, when there was no one to notice me, for the maids were careless in the housekeeper's absence, and had slipped off for the moment--at any rate, they said afterward they never saw me;--so off I went.

"I caught the eight o'clock train just in time; which I considered most fortunate. How often afterward did I wish I had missed it! And reasoning within myself as the wheels bore me away, that it was perfectly right to spend the money to go home, for my father had been quite willing for me to take the treat with Mrs. Ferguson and the others, I settled back in my seat, and tried not to feel strange at travelling alone."

"Oh dear me!" exclaimed the girls, huddling up closer to Miss Salisbury's knees. Miss Anstice paced back and forth; it was too late to stop the story now, and her nervousness could only be walked off.

"But I noticed the farther I got from the boarding school, little doubts would come creeping into my mind,--first, was it very wise for me to have set out in this way? then, was it right? And suddenly in a flash, it struck me that I was doing a very wrong thing, and that, if my father and my mother knew it, they would be greatly distressed. And I would have given worlds, if I had possessed them, to be back at Mrs. Ferguson's, studying my philosophy lesson. And I laid my head on the back of the seat before me, and cried as hard as I could."

Amy sniffed into her handkerchief, and two or three other girls coughed as if they had taken cold, while no one looked into her neighbor's face.

"And a wild idea crossed my mind once, of rushing up to the conductor and telling him of my trouble, to ask him if I couldn't get off at the next station and go back; but a minute's reflection told me that this was foolish. There was only the late afternoon train to take me to the school. I had started, and must go on."