“If you please, Miss Wilcox,” the principal assumed her deadliest tones, “we prefer to hear your excuses in private. And I wish you would soften down your very—uh—heavy voice; and please do not say ‘awful?’”
A chill passed over the room, thawed instantly by Bea.
“Oh, all right,” she chirped in cheery basso. “But it ain’t my fault if the clock’s wrong; is it?”
“If you will be so good as not to speak. And pray remember that ‘ain’t’ is not good English.”
“Oh, ain’t it?” she inquired pleasantly, adding, as if to her compatriots, “but I bet the thingembob’s off the pendulum?”
“Miss Wilcox!” the command was peremptory.
“Yes’m?”
The “yes’m” was most deferential. It was meant to be. Miss Wilcox was the big, muscular type of girl that goes in for athletics, cares little for books, loving rather to strive muscle against muscle than to swaddle and grow prim and become self-conscious of nose and eyelash. These athletic girls are glorious at tennis and hockey—Bea Wilcox, at fifteen, was a wonder at both sports; she could even bat and play first-base like a man—but they are not usually considered refined. Delicate intellectual shadings they do not always perceive. Her “yes’m” was a rough attempt at respect, but it drew a titter from the precise young ladies.
The titter from the comic “yes’m” had hardly died out before a far-off bell, tolling lazily, proclaimed that in at least one church tower a belated nine-o’clock was being celebrated.
“There!” cried Miss Wilcox, striking a listening attitude. “Listen! D’y’ hear that! Ah! ha! Miss Warren! We always go by that bell. I told you you were fast.”