Suddenly said Aubrey:
“Pooh! My cold in the head isn’t bad. It’s stuffy in here. It’s recreation afternoon, anyway, and no lessons till study hour at night. Let’s get our things and take a walk.”
“Why, Aubrey! How can we without a teacher?”
“A great deal better than with one. It’s teacher’s day off, too, our class walking one. Oh! come on, Natalie. Don’t be tiresome.”
“I don’t want to be tiresome. I want to go. I’ll run ask Madame. Probably she’ll tell Miss Leonard to look after us, or she might even send the groom.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind, Natalie Graham. Madame has a managers’ meeting in the big drawing-room. I heard them managing as I went through the upper hall. Miss Leonard is too strict. I’d rather stay at home than go out with that linen-room woman. Come on. I’m off.”
Alas! Where Aubrey led the way, the weaker Natalie was apt to follow. Therefore, the first act of Jessica’s life at school was one of disobedience. The strictest rule of Madame Mearsom’s establishment was against her pupils’ going upon the streets alone, without the protection of someone in authority.
But Aubrey was a born New Yorker. She knew, or fancied that she knew, all its streets and avenues, having seen many of them from the safety of her father’s carriage—rarely from the point of a pedestrian—save on those prim walks of the scholars, such as most of them were now taking.
Once upon the street, she advised:
“Don’t let’s go the regular route. There’s no fun meeting the others. If we do we’ll have to fall into line and go, ‘miminy-piminy’ just as usual. New York is all in squares. Let’s go by this east square and then around the block home again. We can do that as many times as we like and stay out till we’re tired.”