IT COMES TO A HEAD
Jennie Bruce was just as full of good humor as she could be. She may have lacked reverence for teachers, precedent, the dignity of the seniors, and honored custom; but nobody with a normal mind could really be angry with her.
Her deportment marks were dreadfully low; but she was quick at her studies and was really too kind-hearted to mean to bother the teachers.
She managed to get in and out of a dozen scrapes a day. Yet the rollicking good-nature of the girl, and her frank honesty did much to save her from serious punishment.
Jennie went on her care-free way, assured in her own mind that certain of the rules of Pinewood Hall were only made to be broken. If a thought came to her in class, or a desire to communicate with another scholar, she could no more resist the temptation than she could fly.
“Miss Bruce! half an hour this afternoon on grammar rules for talking!”
“Oh, Miss Maybrick! I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”
“Learn to think, then.”
“Jennie, if you must make such faces, please do so out of the view of your classmates, I beg.” This from gentle Miss Meader.
“I—I was just trying how it felt to be strangled with a cord. It says here the Thuggee did it in India as a religious practice.”