“Why! whoever heard the like?” she cried. “Not to speak? Goodness! Why, I never had so many things to say to you in my life before, and you sit as dumb as one of those Japanese monkeys,” and she pointed to the tiny “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil” group on Nan’s bookshelf.
At first Nan only smiled at her chum’s impatience. But soon she found it necessary to steal off by herself during recreation time. The temptation to speak was too great.
Nor did Bess try to make it easier for Nan to keep strictly to the line of punishment that had been inflicted upon her by Dr. Beulah Prescott. Bess began to take a wicked delight in catching her off her guard and getting a word past Nan’s lips before she thought.
“Oh bah!” cried the careless Bess. “What does it matter? We’re in our own room. Dr. Beulah knows very well you won’t stick to the very letter of her command.”
Nan felt differently about it. The principal had trusted her to keep her lips sealed during recreation hours; and she tried as much as possible to keep by herself. “Solitary recreation hours for a week.” That was Dr. Prescott’s command and Nan did her best to keep away from her fellow-pupils. One afternoon, between her last recitation for the day and suppertime, she went down to Mrs. Cupp with her arms full of summer clothing, for permission to put the frocks away in her trunk.
“Here’s your key and the key to the trunk-room. I trust the latter to you, Nancy, because I see you are a girl of honor,” Mrs. Cupp said, rather kindly for her. “I see you are trying to obey the doctor’s instructions regarding your recreation time. You may stay down there till the supper bell rings, if you like. But remember, if you wish to bring anything up with you from your trunk, you must show it to me.”
“Yes Mrs. Cupp,” replied Nan, soberly.
This was not the first time she had asked permission to go to her trunk. And she had always chosen a time when no other girls were around, and she could be alone in the trunk-room. She went down stairs rather thoughtfully now. Mrs. Cupp believed she was a girl of honor. Nan was wondering if, after all, she came up to the requirements for such a person?
“I am not being entirely truthful right now,” she thought. “I don’t need to go down cellar with these things. I have plenty of room for them in my clothes closet. I am going to my trunk for an entirely different reason.
“I wonder,” pursued Nan Sherwood, reflectively, “if all girls are like that? Are we naturally untruthful about little things? Do I know a perfectly frank girl in all this school? Goodness! nobody but poor Amelia Boggs, and she is half-cracked, the other girls say.