But the discomfort was not yet over. The halls and dressing-rooms were filled with an odor of wet wool and rubber; rain-cloaks and rubbers were confusedly mixed, and Miss Brownlow reminded the complainers, in a most irritating manner, of the number of times she had urged them all to mark their gossamers and overshoes, and positively forbade them to expect any interference from her if anything were lost. Then some of the girls ran down stairs, and all were ordered back; and, it being impossible to distinguish the culprits, the innocent suffered with the guilty, so that it was nearly five o'clock before they were finally allowed to descend the stairs, and they had been hearing the exasperating shouts of freedom from the boys under the windows for a full half hour.
Miriam and Winnie, walking home under the same umbrella, felt their desire to be good and the courage to strive for it, at the lowest ebb. Winnie said petulantly, "I wish there were no such thing as school! It's dig, dig, dig, and then it's cram, cram, cram, until, at last, you don't know whether you know anything or not! I'm just sick of it!"
"You'd feel more disagreeable if you'd lost the third pair of rubbers this winter, and had wet feet. I don't see why it is that it's always my rubbers that are gone, anyway. Mamma will say that I grow more heedless every day of my life; that I never will learn to take care of anything; and will wonder if I think papa is a millionaire. I wish now that I'd marked that last pair of rubbers."
"Oh, dear! It's so hard to do right, and not to feel hateful and cross. Everyone seems to get cross but Ernestine. But then, none of the rest are as good as she is. I don't believe she ever feels like doing wrong; and she always seems happy, too; not peevish or sulky like the rest of us. Do you suppose—"
But just then, too absorbed to notice where they were going, they ran against an old gentleman, and their umbrella was knocked out of their hands into the gutter, where, of course, it was soon all wet and muddy.
Too absorbed to notice where they were going.
Then the old gentleman sputtered and scolded, and said he wished little girls would look where they were going once in a while, and that they were nothing but "giggling nuisances" anyhow. Then Miriam dropped her books, and, as both she and Winnie stooped to pick them up, they knocked their heads together with such force that tears sprang to the eyes of both.
As a usual thing, such occurrences would have made them laugh, but they were far enough from being "giggling nuisances" on this occasion, and when they turned the corner and separated, it would not have been easy to find two muddier or crosser little girls, while both, I fear, had forgotten all about the giants they were intending to fight.
When Winnie reached home, she spoke to Ralph so crossly, when he ran up to her for a kiss, that his lips trembled and he turned to Mrs. Burton, saying, "Mamma, is me bad? 'Innie 'ouldn't tiss me!"