Miss Wewitz paused a moment or two for a reply, and obtaining no answer, she continued, raising her voice—
“I did hope, Miss Chutney, I repeat, that you had become sensible of the shameful manner in which you have been behaving for the last two days.”
Here she paused again.
“But,” she continued, finding no notice taken of her observation on the subject of Miss Chutney’s penitence, “from your silence I am led to believe that you still require some few hours more self-communion, to bring you to a perfect consciousness of the wickedness of your ways.”
Miss Wewitz made another pause in her discourse, believing that the girl’s sulkiness could not possibly hold out much longer; and then proceeded to inform her, that, in consideration of her attention to her French last “half,” if she chose to ask her pardon for all she had done, she might leave her place of confinement, and go down stairs immediately.
Still, to Miss Wewitz’s horror at what she could not but consider as an instance of stubbornness unparalleled in the whole annals of scholastic misdemeanours, not a syllable was spoken by way of reply to her liberal offer.
“What am I to think of you?” she exclaimed, in the depth of her indignation. “Are you aware what will become of you, if you persist in your present line of conduct?” (Here she stopped once more.) “Are you aware, Miss,” she cried, in a loud voice, as she grew angry at the continued inattention to all she said—“that your behaviour is most insulting to those whom it is your duty to respect? In all my long experience, I never knew such wicked, wicked sulkiness on the part of any of my pupils before. Well, Miss,” she added, as she bowed sarcastically to the lay figure, “all I have to say is, that as it is not my place to play the suppliant to you, I must leave you until such time as your guardian arrives, and then we shall see, perhaps, whether his authority can make any impression on your stubborn nature.”
With this dignified remonstrance, Miss Wewitz turned round to leave the room; and as she grasped the handle of the door, she thought she would try one more appeal.
“Now, come, there’s a good thing,” she said, appealing tenderly to the figure, “do give over your sulks, and come down stairs with me, like a dear.”
But finding that neither remonstrances, upbraidings, nor entreaties produced the least effect upon the object of her discourse, she turned haughtily upon her heel and slammed the door after her, mentally observing, as she descended the stairs, that she wouldn’t take it upon herself to say what would be the end of that wicked, obstinate thing.