CHAPTER XXV.
MURIEL FINDS A FRIEND.
Miss Gordon looked up from her desk, at which she was writing when, at her request, the door of the office opened. “Oh, good afternoon, Faith, dear,” she said when she saw the little brown maid who stood there, for nut-brown the girl surely was, hair, eyes and skin being dark.
“Can you spare a moment?” Faith asked, not wishing to interrupt, for she knew that her mission could be postponed.
“As many as you wish. Come in and sit down. I know by your eager expression that you have something to ask or to tell. What is it, dear?”
“It’s about Muriel Storm, Miss Gordon, that I wish to speak. I have been with her for the last two hours.”
The principal looked her pleasure. “Oh, Faith,” she said, “I’m so glad if you are taking an interest in poor, heart-broken Muriel. There is wonderful material in that girl and you are the one pupil in the whole school whom I had thought of asking to befriend her, but I decided to wait and see if there were any who would be kind to her without my having asked it as a favor.”
“I, too, think that Muriel is very unusual,” the girl declared warmly. “When I visited her room today I felt at once that yearning one would feel for any helpless thing that was hurt, but soon I became interested in her for herself alone. I never before saw a face that registers emotion more wonderfully, as Miss Burns calls it in our drama class.”
“You are right,” Miss Gordon replied. “I soon found that Muriel loved nature passionately, and what do you suppose we have been doing during the evening hour that we have spent together this week? Reading and listening to the great nature poems! And, dear, one night when the girl came to me she said, almost shyly: ‘Miss Gordon, I heard a little verse today when I was out with my pine,’ and then she told it. Although crudely worded, that little poem promises much. It described the surf beating on the rocks of her Windy Island home and of a lame pelican which is unable to compete with the more active birds in its struggle for existence, and depends largely on Muriel for its sustenance. She had been thinking of this bird friend, it seemed, and of the nature poems that I had read when this little verse came to her thought.”
“Miss Gordon, do you think that this untaught island girl is really a poet at heart?”
“I think just that. But, dear, Muriel is not untaught. True it is that she cannot speak our language. She knows nothing of science or numbers, but she has been taught high ideals by one of nature’s noblemen, her grandfather. Too, she has been taught the folk-lore of Ireland by another whom she calls Captain Barney, and nature, the winds, sky, storm, birds and sea have taught her much else. There are few girls at High Cliffs who are as well grounded in things worth while as is our Muriel Storm. Now, dear, what is it you wish to say?”