“It’s the birds,” she explained. “They were only eggs, but now they’re little birds, and they’re so hungry they are starving. I don’t know what to do,” and the tale ended in what sounded much like the beginning of a sob.
“That’s all right,” said the professor gently. “The mother bird knows how to take care of them; but if you want to help, just dig some angle worms and put them on the island where she can see them.”
“Oh, thank you,” cried Ella. “I knew I must do something, but I didn’t know what.”
Ella’s mother told her that she ought to apologize to the professor for interrupting his class. She went to him obediently and said,
“Professor, I am sorry I interrupted your class, but I don’t think I did—much—and anyway the birds had to be fed.”
“So they did,” said the professor kindly, “and more interruptions of that sort would be better for birds and for people.”
I am afraid that Ella was not exactly a model child, for she cut her name on a tree in the circle with the Christmas jackknife, much to the wrath of the man who cared for the grounds. She came in promptly when the mother, for fear of the lightning, called her in from the piazza during a heavy thunderstorm; but the next minute she was in the highest cupola. The time spent in the gloomy basement dining-room seemed to her so unbearably long that the mother sometimes yielded to her pleadings and excused her before the meal was over. This, the principal suggested, was not quite the thing to do, as it broke up the “uniformity,” whatever that may have been; so the mother told her she must remain through the meal. Ella remained, but she brought a little story-book and quietly read through the last quarter of an hour. The big boys smiled in comprehension of the situation, and the principal made an unconditional surrender. To Ella he said, “You need not wait if you would rather go out”; and to the boys, “If you would save every minute as that child does, you would accomplish a great deal more.”
The mother wrote to the grandmother in the mountains:
“Ella is very obedient, but she always thinks of something else. I will describe her, so the children can fancy a little how she looks. She has on a black beaver cloak, black felt hat trimmed with scarlet velvet and plumes, a chinchilla muff, and chenille scarf. She has just come in from church, and now, before her things are taken off, is reading her Sabbath-school book. She devours all the books that she finds.”
Ella’s worst—and most innocent—exploit was her sudden disappearance on the most important day of the whole school year. The first class was to graduate. It consisted of two students. One was to have the valedictory and the other the salutatory; but it was to be just as real a graduation as if there had been forty to go out into the world with the seminary’s blessing upon them.