Читать книгу Three Girls from School - Meade L. T. - Страница 4

When Annie had ended her conference with Mabel Lushington – a conference which left that young lady in a state of intense and even nervous excitement, in which she kept on repeating, “I won’t; I daren’t. Oh! but I long to. Oh! but I just wish I could,” until Annie felt inclined to beat her – she went away at last with the quiet assurance of a girl who had won a victory.

Her scheme was ripening to perfection. Mabel, of course, would yield; the money would be forthcoming. Priscilla would stay at the school, and Annie would have her hour of triumph.

It was half-an-hour before bed-time on that same evening when clever and wicked Annie had a further conference with Priscilla. She found poor Priscilla looking very pale and woe-begone, seated all by herself at one end of the long schoolroom.

“Come out,” said Annie; “it is a perfectly lovely evening, and we need not go up to our horrid beds for another half-hour.”

“You want to tempt me again,” said Priscilla, “I won’t go with you.”

“You needn’t,” said Annie with emphasis. “I have only this to say. Your prize paper is finished?”

“Yes.”

“I will come to your room for it very, very early to-morrow morning.”

“You know, Annie, you daren’t come to my room.”

“I dare, and will,” said Annie. “I will be with you at five o’clock, before any of the servants are up. At that hour we will safely transact a very important little piece of business.”

“You mean,” said Priscilla, raising her haggard face and looking with her dark-grey eyes full at the girl, “that you want me to go down for ever in my own estimation, and to proclaim to my good teachers, to dear Mrs Lyttelton, and to all the girls here that I am not myself at all. You want me to read an essay written by one of the stupidest girls in the school as my own, and you want her to read mine – which may probably be the best of those written – and you want her to win the prize which ought to be mine.”

“Yes, I do want her to win the prize,” said Annie, “and for that reason I want her to read your essay as though it were her own.”

“You forget one thing,” said Priscilla. “Mabel writes so atrociously that no one will believe for a single moment that my paper could be her work; and, on the other hand, people will be as little likely to go down in their high estimation of my talent as to suppose that I have seriously written the twaddle which she will give me. You see yourself, Annie, the danger of your scheme. It is unworkable; our teachers are all a great deal too clever to be taken in by it. It cannot possibly be carried out.”

“It can, and will,” said Annie. “I have thought of all that, and am preparing the way. In the first place, the paper you will read will be by no means bad. It will be the sort of paper that will pass muster, and long before prize day there will be an undercurrent of belief in the school that Mabel is by no means the dunce she is credited to be.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You had best not know, Priscilla. The main thing for you to consider is this: You do not go to your horrid uncle Josiah. You spend your summer holidays with him, I know; but you return here afterwards. You have another happy year at Lyttelton School, and at the end of that time you win a splendid scholarship for Newnham or Girton, and go to Cambridge for three happy years. Think of it, Priscilla; and you can do it so easily. Do think of it, darling Pris. You are either a household drudge or a country dressmaker if you don’t do this thing; and if you do – and it’s really such a very little thing – you may be anything you like.”

Priscilla sat very still while Annie was talking to her, but in each of her cheeks there rose a brilliant spot of colour. It spread and spread until the whole young face looked transformed, the eyes brighter and darker than before, the lips quivering with suppressed excitement. The girl’s figure became suddenly tense. She stood up; she caught Annie’s hands between her own.

“Oh, how you tempt me!” she said. “How you tempt me! I did not know I could be so wicked as to listen to you; but I am tempted – tempted!”

“Of course you are, darling. Who would not be who was in your shoes? Isn’t it the law of life to do the very best for one’s self?”

“Oh, but it isn’t the right law!” gasped poor Priscilla.

“Well, right or wrong,” answered Annie, “it is the wisest law.”

“But even – even if I did it,” said Priscilla, “how is the money to be got?”

“You leave that to us,” said Annie. “Your term’s fees will be paid, and there will be something over. Leave all that to us.”

“Go away now,” said Priscilla; “don’t talk to me any more at all; I must have time to think. Oh! I don’t want to do wrong. I must pray to God to help me not to yield to you.”

“You will not do that,” said Annie, “for your own heart, and every argument in your mind, are inclining you in the other direction. I leave you now, for I feel certain of you; but Mabel and I will visit you to-morrow morning at five o’clock.”

“You can’t come in, for the door will be locked.”

“You know,” said Annie, staggered for a moment, “that it is against the rules for any girl to lock her door at night.”

“It will be a much lesser transgression on my part to lock my room door than to allow you and Mabel in,” answered Priscilla.

“Well, we will come on the chance,” replied Annie. “Ta-ta for a time, Pris. Oh, what a jolly year you will have, and how hard you will work! How I shall rejoice to see it! – for, whatever you must think of me, I at least am not selfish. I lose my dear friend Mabel by this scheme, and I keep you, who have never yet been my very special friend; but you will be when we return together to Lyttelton School next autumn. Good-bye, till to-morrow morning.”

Annie tripped from the room.