"'Expect the second spirit on the next night at the same hour!'" he would say, while his chains clanked and rattled, and the blood of one hearer, at least, congealed in her veins. "'The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us.'"
And then, "the apparition walked backward, and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open."
Sarah had heard Miss Ellingwood read the directions, and Edward obeyed them with many ghostly variations. Once Sarah had been called upon to lift the window by jerks and starts.
In the midst of all the delightful excitement of school life, Sarah often scolded herself for not feeling perfectly happy and contented. She was learning more than she ever dreamed of learning, she had the constant association of Miss Ellingwood, she practically lived in Miss Ellingwood's luxurious rooms. But she had no life outside them, and it was that which troubled her. She realized that there was a great deal of fun in the school in which she had no share. There were parades which appeared simultaneously with the stroke of ten, beginning at the upper corner of the woman's side of the great building, and winding in and out the halls, and down the stairways, like a long snake, to the lower corner and back again. There were feasts by day and night; there was dancing in the gymnasium after the classes were over. Sarah was not invited to the feasts, and she looked on silently at the dancing. It was true that she did not know how to dance, but if stout Mabel Thorn could learn, she could also, she was sure. She tried the steps sometimes when she was alone in Miss Ellingwood's room.
Mabel and Ellen ignored her completely. They did not always speak to her when she came into the room. Once they allowed her to search for her maps, which Ellen had been tracing, and which she had hastily covered with her papers. Gradually, the whole school became aware that her room-mates avoided her, and no one was clear-sighted enough to see that it was a compliment to Sarah. When Ellen and Mabel were called to the office and reproved for making unnecessary noise, they complained loudly that Sarah had reported them, forgetting the many times that Miss Jones had come upstairs in the middle of the night to remonstrate with them. The other students, even Ethel Davis and Gertrude Manley, who thought they were just, began to look a little askance at Sarah. No fault is more hated by students than tale-bearing, and no suspicion flies more quickly.
Ellen's and Mabel's rudeness did not trouble Sarah. That did not seem worth worrying about. It was her failure to make friends with Ethel and Gertrude, and the other Juniors whom she so admired, that troubled her. Once she had called Ethel by her first name, and Ethel had responded with a quick, "What did you say, Miss Wenner?" She had grown accustomed to having her teachers call her Miss Wenner. But these boys and girls,—that was different.
"At home," she said sorrowfully to herself, "I was always common" (friendly); "and here I am just the same. But these people do not like it, they are too high up."
It could not be because she was a newcomer, because they were gracious to other newcomers. They called even the careless girl who spilled her ink, Mary. They had teas in their room to which only newcomers were invited, but Sarah was not among them. Sarah was convinced that it was some grave fault in herself which made them avoid her.
Fortunately her work occupied most of her thoughts, and when that was over there were always her letters home to be written. She gave vivid, illustrated accounts of those same feasts and parades at which she looked longingly, and the home people never guessed that it was a lonely outsider who described them, sometimes in prose, sometimes in much-admired jingle. She even described Ellen dressed to represent William, as though it were all a great joke, which she had enjoyed immensely. She told about Edward Ellis's wonderful "Bobs," a collie, who could spring up to the low branches of the apple trees in the fields at the back of the campus, and who could perform many wonderful tricks. She drew pictures of him, and of Professor Minturn, who strode about the room while he lectured, and of the Geography teacher, who always folded his hands so precisely, and sat so still.
"Sarah's so dumb,
It makes him numb,"