Tess was really much disturbed over the news of Miss Pepperill's injury. She would not wait for luncheon but went straight over to the house where her teacher boarded, and inquired for her.
The red-haired, sharp-tongued lady was really quite badly hurt. There was a compound fracture of the leg, and Dr. Forsyth feared some injury to the brain, for Miss Pepperill's head was seriously cut. Tess learned that they had been obliged to shave off all the teacher's red, red hair!
"And that's awful!" she told Dot, on her return. "For goodness only knows what color it will be when it grows out again. Miss Lippit (she's the landlady where Miss Pepperill boards) showed it to me. And it's beautiful, long, long hair."
"Mebbe it will come out like Mrs. MacCall's—pepper-and-salt color," said Dot, reflectively. "We haven't got a pepper-and-salt teacher in school, have we?"
Such light reflections as this did not please Tess. She really forgot to repeat the part of Swiftwing, the hummingbird, in her anxiety about the injured Miss Pepperill.
At two o'clock the big rehearsal was called.
"I don't believe I will go back with you," Agnes said, to Ruth. "I can't sit there and hear Trix murder that part. Oh, dear!"
"I bet you won't ever eat any more strawberries," chuckled Neale, who had come over the back fence of the Corner House premises, that being his nearest way to school.
"Don't speak to me of them!" cried Agnes. "A piece of Mrs. MacCall's strawberry shortcake would give me the colic, I know—just to look at it!"
"Oh, you'll get all over that before the strawberry season comes around again," her older sister said placidly. "You'd better come, Aggie."