CHAPTER V PROFESSOR MINTURN'S EXPERIMENT
It needed no "cutting-up" of Sarah's room-mates to send her again to Miss Ellingwood's room. She had just settled fearfully to study the next evening, when there was a rap at the door, and Miss Ellingwood appeared. She was amused at herself because her room had seemed strangely lonely without the little figure bending over the table at her side.
"Don't you want to bring your books over to my room?" she asked; and Sarah responded with delighted alacrity.
When Ellen and Mabel came in and found that she had gone, they were not at all pleased. They knew that Sarah had finished her Geography lesson and they had hoped to have some help. When they discovered the neatly drawn maps in Sarah's drawer in the table, they decided that they would do as well.
"We'll get even with her for tattling," laughed Mabel, as she prepared to copy them with tissue paper and black impression paper.
As the days passed, it seemed to Sarah that she was living in a new world. When she was not in class or in the gymnasium, she was in Miss Ellingwood's room, or walking with Miss Ellingwood. Miss Ellingwood helped her over the hard places in her work, she laughed at her mistakes in English, and corrected them, she let Sarah help to serve the tea when the boys and girls came in in the afternoons.
The Juniors came oftenest; they were in Miss Ellingwood's class, and as the time for the giving of the "Christmas Carol" approached, they were there constantly. Sarah had read the story; she knew how old Scrooge's sordid heart, devoted to money-getting, was filled with the Christmas spirit by the appearance of his dead partner, Jacob Marley, and by the three ghosts of Christmas Present, Christmas Past, and Christmas Future. Ethel Davis and Gertrude Manley were to be Mrs. Cratchit and Fred's wife,—they were the leading women's parts. To Sarah's thinking, there were no rôles so interesting as those of the ghosts, which were taken by boys. Their costumes were so wonderful, they moved about so mysteriously, they were able to introduce so many original devices. Perhaps next year, if she were promoted to the Junior class, and if there were a ghost in the play, Miss Ellingwood might give the part to her, and then she would be completely happy.
During the practicing, she took her books into Miss Ellingwood's bedroom, and sitting there at her work, she could hear the Juniors laughing merrily. When it was time for the tableaux, in which Scrooge was to see his past and future, and all the harm he had done in the present, they opened the door into the bedroom, so that they might have a double stage.
It was then that Edward Ellis, Dr. Ellis's son, who was a Junior and represented Jacob Marley, came and stood near Sarah's table and recited his sepulchral part.