"I wish I read more," said Gretta. "I do love my music; and if I didn't, I'd have to keep it up all the same. But I would like to read the book you are talking about."
"You may take it," said Ernestine, "and keep it just as long as you wish."
"Speaking of borrowing books," said Miriam, "reminds me that I did the most dreadful thing to-day. Miss Carter had lent me Mrs. Gaskel's 'Life of Charlotte Bronte,' and I had just returned it yesterday, feeling very grateful, for I think it is nice in Miss Carter to take an interest in so many girls. I should think she would just get to hating us, for it is the same thing year in and year out, and most of us are so trying.
"But although I love her dearly, you know how angry she gets, and she was giving Josie Thompson such a lecture about there being no punctuation in her composition, and then she read a paragraph as it was punctuated—just 'like commas and periods shaken out of a pepper-box,' she said. The subject was 'Joan of Arc,' and Josie, as usual, had rather a mixed idea of her character, and what Miss Carter read sounded something like this:
"'Joan of Arc, was a poor, girl who heard a great many, ghost stories and these turned her head and she imagined, that, it would be a great deal more fun to lead soldiers. To battle in the war. With England than to be spending her time tending sheep? on the mountains she thought she would enjoy herself better.'
"That last was so much like Josie—who, as you know, is always talking about enjoying herself—that I could hardly keep in, and when Josie made a mouth at Miss Carter the minute her back was turned, three or four of us giggled out loud, and Miss Carter stopped lecturing Josie and turned her wrath on us.
"That was yesterday, but this morning the whole affair was still fresh in my memory, and three or four of the girls in Miss Brownlow's room happening to come about the same time that I did, I began to tell them about it. I began in a high key, a great deal worse than Miss Carter ever uses, although she does pitch her voice very high when she is vexed. I said:
"'Miss Thompson, I am surprised at you; in fact, I am more than surprised. It almost passes belief that a girl should begin to study punctuation almost as soon as her school life begins, as in our schools, and after six or seven years should not be able even to use a period, to say nothing of the more complicated marks; to know nothing, absolutely nothing, of her own language.'
"Here I interrupted myself to show them the kind of mouth Josie made, and of course they all laughed, for they know how her mouth and nose go up at every little thing. Then I went on.
"Miss Carter didn't see the mouth that Josie made, and she caught us laughing, and said, 'Can it be possible that there are girls in this class, girls of good rank and standing, and of moderately good behavior, who can laugh, yes, actually laugh, at the ignorance of one of their school-mates? Something is wrong, radically wrong,'—and here I made the gesture she always makes when she says 'radically wrong,' and—what do you think? There she stood, right behind me!"