One day Deborah came across her just before school time, busy stuffing the front of her bodice with brown paper.
“What are you doing?” she asked languidly.
“Well, you see, Miss So-and-So has a remarkably good bust, and I want to be more like her,” she answered.
“But you’re not going to school like that,” said Deborah, still with the same half-interest, as she saw Elinor fastening her buttons over the crude padding.
“Of course I am. What’s wrong with me?”
“Oh, nothing,” but she eyed her with mild astonishment.
All that afternoon the pupil-teachers were a mixture of giggles and laughter, but Elinor looked as serious as a judge, and as matronly as if she were her own mother.
A little while after this a mouse ran out in her particular class, causing most naturally great excitement.
“Oh! OH! Miss Montague, there it is just behind you! There, behind your foot! Oh! Oh! it’s run up your petticoat!” and Elinor ran out to shake her skirts. “There, it’s run under the desk.” But it had really run under the desk long since, only Elinor had grown tired of the monotony of sitting still, and the others enjoyed it immensely; to see the dignified teacher skipping about thinking the mouse was on her was to them delightful.
Elinor did not stay long at school—she left in about a year. She had never made much progress there, lessons evidently not being her particular forte.