“I often wonder too,” said Madeline shortly, winking her tears back with a great effort. “You are not going the best way to work to help me to endure my lot, Flo, raking up all these things. Bad or good, I must submit. I have no alternative—nowhere to go, until my father comes home. The best thing I can do is to be patient, and try and repay the Harpers for some of the money they have expended on me.”
“Repay them!” echoed Miss Blewitt, scornfully. “They made a very good thing out of you for nine years—large profits and quick returns. Now, although your father has not sent his usual remittance—is not that the word?—and they have heard that he is in business difficulties, yet I think they might have given you a little more law—a longer day. They might have exercised some patience. You have not heard of your father for more than a year, have you?” she added bluntly.
“No, not for sixteen months,” answered the pupil-teacher.
“But even if he were dead,” proceeded Flo, with a fine disregard of her friend’s feelings, and an open defiance of the laws of good breeding, such as is occasionally to be found in girls of her age, “you could not honestly pretend to be very much cut up! You have not seen him since you were a small child. You left Australia when you were seven years old. He is a stranger to you.”
“A stranger, certainly, in one way; but still he is my father, and I have a presentiment that we shall meet again, and before long,” rolling up a pair of stockings as she spoke, and averting her eyes from her outspoken schoolfellow.
“Pooh! I don’t believe in presentiments. I had a presentiment that father was going to give me a cart and cob last holidays, and it ended in smoke. If your father had been in the land of the living, surely you would have heard. I know I am saying this very baldly and plainly, but there is no use in beating about the bush—is there? You must face the position sooner or later.”
“You mean the position of being an orphan?” said Madeline, tremulously. “But I refuse to accept that until I have not one grain of hope left. It is easy for you, who have your father and mother and five brothers at home, to talk in this way. Remember, I have only one relation in the world, and when I lose him I lose all.”
“Well, all I can say is, that I hope your presentiment will turn out better than mine! Oh, here are the girls coming back!” she exclaimed peevishly, as a long file of figures appeared, passing the windows two and two. “What a bore they are! They seem to have only been out a quarter of an hour, and here they come marching in, disturbing our nice comfortable little talk.”
Florence Blewitt, who so successfully practised the art of plain speaking and trampling on other people’s susceptibilities—people were welcome to trample on hers, she declared; she had none—was a short, squarely-built girl of sixteen, with a sharp nose, thick brown hair, intelligent grey eyes, and a very dark skin—a skin that betrayed no soupçon of foreign blood, but was, nevertheless, more brown than white. She was brusque, eccentric, clever, and indolent. Florence could—if she would—but she so seldom would. She preferred the ease of an undisturbed seat at the very bottom of the class to ambitious battlings and feverish strivings for the first place. She was the spoiled only daughter of a wealthy merchant and shipowner, and, being deferred to and made much of at home, was disposed to be both arbitrary and independent at school. Moreover, she was selfish, which is not a taking trait in a young woman’s character, and was anything but a popular idol. She would borrow readily, but hated to lend; and the only thing with which she was generous was her advice; the sole present she was ever known to make was her opinion—gratis. Few were honoured by her liking, and if she had a friend at Harperton, it was the girl who sat beside her, conscientiously mending a basketful of most hopeless-looking stockings.
“I wonder what your fate will be, Maddie?” said Flo, staring at her meditatively, and studying her delicate profile, her pencilled eyebrows, her shining hair.