Prissie frowned.
“What do you mean?” she said. “I have come here to study. It has been done with such, such difficulty. It would be cruel to waste a moment. I mustn’t; it wouldn’t be right. You can’t mean what you say.”
Miss Heath was silent. She thought it kinder to look away from Prissie. After a moment she said, in a voice which she on purpose made intensely quiet and matter-of-fact—
“Many girls come to St. Benet’s, Miss Peel, who are, I fancy, circumstanced like you. Their friends find it difficult to send them here, but they make the sacrifice, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another—and the girls come. They know it is their duty to study; they have an ulterior motive, which underlies everything else. They know by-and-by they must pay back.”
“Oh, yes,” said Priscilla, starting forward, and a flush coming into her face. “I know that—that is what it is for. To pay back worthily—to give back a thousandfold what you have received. Those girls can’t be idle, can they?” she added in a gentle, piteous sort of way.
“My dear, there have been several such girls at St. Benet’s, and none of them has been idle; they have been best and first among our students. Many of them have done more than well—many of them have brought fame to St. Benet’s. They are in the world now, and earning honourable livelihoods as teachers, or in other departments where cultivated women can alone take the field. These girls are all paying back a thousandfold those who have helped them.”
“Yes,” said Prissie.
“You would like to follow their example?”
“Oh, yes; please tell me about them.”
“Some of them were like you, and thought they would take up everything—everything I mean in the scholastic line. They filled their days with lectures, and studied into the short hours of the night. Maggie, dear, please tell Miss Peel about Good-night and Good-morning.”