DRIFTING AWAY.
It was the eve of the midsummer holidays; the examinations were over. Miss Pinkett had come out victorious in music and geography, Ursula in drawing and artistic needlework. The Beauty had proved to be nowhere in the competition. Meg had taken no prize, but she had been encouraged by kind reports from Signora Vallaria and Mr. Eyre. She had worked incessantly, and some of the teachers had recognized her zeal.
The tension of the past few weeks was relaxed, and Miss Reeves was giving the picnic that she usually organized for her pupils, in the Surrey woods, watered by a branch of the Thames. It was a perfect summer day, broadly golden, benignly calm.
The repast under the trees was over; the girls, tired of their games, sat about in groups discussing plans for the holidays. Meg sat apart. In the midst of the surrounding gayety the loneliness of her heart deepened. She was enduring the tantalizing pangs of picturing the happy hours from which she was excluded.
She heard of the dear little children who would come to the station to welcome these home-comers; of the lawn-tennis parties, the rides, the picnics which awaited them. One girl was going home for the wedding of her sister; another was promised a pony to ride out with her brother George. There were vivid descriptions going on all around her of the charms of holidays. Oh, the delights of not hearing the school-bell of a morning—of awaking at the appointed hour, and being able to turn round cosily for another sleep! All were going home; even the teachers looked forward to meeting relatives and friends. She alone was remaining—she alone of all the school had no home to go to. She rose and wandered away. Her desolate little heart could bear it no more: a bitter sense was growing there that no one cared for her—that if Mr. Standish cared for her he would have written.
Meg walked away, not minding where she went, willing only to be out of earshot of that joyous talk. She presently found herself by the river's bank; and there, moored among the reeds, was the longboat hired for the occasion, in which the girls had rowed each other in parties all the morning.
Ursula had pressed her to join the group of which she was a member, but Meg had refused. It had seemed to the child enough to lie among the ferns, inhaling the delicate, pungent perfumes, feeling the breath of the summer day on her cheek, surrendering herself to the strength and calm of nature's influence.
Meg now stepped into the boat and sat down. It was like being in a cradle, she thought, as the water softly rocked the craft. No one was near. Presently she perceived that the boat was sliding off—softly, softly the shore was receding; the banks and the long reeds were falling back.
Meg watched immobile. Bundles of oars lay at the bottom of the boat; which was also strewn with bunches of meadow-sweet, elder-blossoms, forget-me-nots, and other riverside trophies which the girls had plucked on their travels. Meg sat upright like a startled rabbit, wondering when the boat would stop. She wished that it would never stop—that it would carry her away, away, she knew not whither! She had heard the girls speak of the "weir." What was that? Was it some weird spot?—a strange island, perhaps, inhabited by some of the water-fowl of which she had read?