There was another shout.
“Oh, papa, you funny!” cried Marjorie. “It isn’t body at all. It’s ‘Bring back my Bonny to me.’ It’s a girl’s name. The first line is, ‘My Bonny lies over the ocean!’”
“That’s it,” said the doctor. “When you sang, ‘My body lies over the ocean,’ I thought it was a strange thing to mislay.”
Whereupon Marjorie went to the piano and insisted on playing the whole thing through, and having Eunice join her in singing it.
The next rehearsal day, Eunice and Cricket were promptly on hand. Presently all the girls were there but Isabel Fleming. Miss Raymond, the elocution teacher, came in, herself, at the last moment.
“I was unexpectedly detained. All here? Isabel Fleming isn’t missing again to-day, is she? What a provoking child! This is the third time she has been absent, and she really needs more drill than any one of you, for she is so careless.” Miss Raymond’s black eyes snapped impatiently, and the girls were glad they were not the delinquent Isabel. “Wouldn’t she catch it the next day?” the girls’ silent exchange of glances said.
“Here I leave pressing work to come here and drill you, for your own benefit and advantage, outside of school hours,” went on Miss Raymond, indignantly; “I often give up engagements that I wish to make, for ungrateful girls who are not even responsible for what they undertake. You ought to be as ashamed to break an engagement as you would be to tell a lie.”
“That is very true,” said Miss Emmet quietly. “However, we won’t scold the girls who are here, on account of those who are not. I will see Isabel to-morrow.”
“They all need a talking-to, though,” cried irate Miss Raymond. “They all happen to be here to-day; but I believe every one of them has missed rehearsals, with the exception of Eunice Ward.”
“Mamma won’t let me,” said Eunice honestly.