“For what? Is either of you ill?” he asked.
She shook her head impatiently,—an action that did not help her.
“Have you a written request from someone in authority?” he asked less kindly.
Of course he knew that she hadn’t! She couldn’t speak. She only stared at him with that odd, alien expression in her soft, dark eyes.
“See here, Betty, just tell me why you want to go,” he proposed kindly. “Tell me just enough so that I can decide whether it would seem to another extremely important. If so, if it seem merely important instead of extremely so, I will excuse you, even though it would mean losing the extra recitation after school. You ought to know, my child, that young folk often get distorted views of things. You are hardly old enough to assume the self-assured manner you have exhibited of late. Perhaps a mistaken sense of values misleads you. Come, now, let us forget for the moment everything that has happened since Mr. Appleton went away, and you tell me why you make what seems to me like a strange demand?”
He smiled kindly, but his very kindness seemed malicious.
“I can’t,” she said sharply, and the bell rang for the close of intermission.
“Very well, then, that’s all there is to it,” he said dryly.
Betty looked wildly towards Rose with an impulse to seize her arm and run with her from the building. But in a quieter moment, she had already seen the folly of such procedure, and she returned to her seat. The minutes dragged, each being a stretch of agony, and yet all too soon came the hour at which for nine weeks she and Rose had left to take the train for Millville. It seemed as if she could not sit still, as if she must snatch Rose away and run to the station. She looked wildly at Mr. Meadowcroft in the mad hope that he would bid her go if she liked. But the class filed into the recitation room leaving the three culprits flanked by rows of empty seats. There was no class reciting in the room at that hour and the silence was intense. Ten minutes passed and Betty heard the train whistle. That was really the end of everything. It seemed to the girl that her heart was broken.
After a little she glanced fearfully at Rose. Rose looked unusually sober and Betty averted her eyes quickly, lest she break down utterly. Rose was beginning to comprehend. She had trusted to Betty to find some way out of the difficulty and had kept up her spirits wonderfully. But she, too, had heard the whistle and knew it meant her doom. It was like a tolling bell.