There were no merry glances from Annie that morning: but she worked steadily and rapidly, and went through that trying ordeal, her French verbs, with such satisfaction that Mademoiselle was on the point of praising her, until she remembered that Annie was in disgrace.
After school, however, Annie did not join her companions in the grounds, but went up to her bedroom, where, by Mrs Willis’s orders, she was to remain until the girls went in. She was to take her own exercise later in the day.
It was now the tenth of June—an intensely sultry day; a misty heat brooded over everything, and not a breath of air stirred the leaves in the trees. The girls wandered about languidly, too enervated by the heat to care to join in any noisy games. They were now restored to their full freedom, and there is no doubt they enjoyed the privileges of having little confabs, and whispering secrets to each other without having Miss Good and Miss Danesbury for ever at their elbows. They talked of many things—of the near approach of the holidays, of the prize day which was now so close at hand, of Annie’s disgrace, and so on.
They wondered, many of them, if Annie would ever be brought to confess her sin, and, if not, how Mrs Willis would act toward her. Dora Russell said in her most contemptuous tones—
“She is nothing, after all, but a charity child, and Mrs Willis has supported her for years for nothing.”
“Yes, and she’s too clever by half; eh, poor old Muddy Stream?” remarked a saucy little girl. “By the way, Dora, dear, how goes the river now?—has it lost itself in the arms of mother ocean yet?”
Dora turned red and walked away, and her young tormentor exclaimed with considerable gusto—
“There, I have silenced her for a bit; I do hate the way she talks about charity children. Whatever her faults, Annie is the sweetest and prettiest girl in the school, in my opinion.” In the meantime Hester was looking in all directions for Susan Drummond. She thought the present a very fitting opportunity to open her attack on her, and she was the more anxious to bring her to reason as a certain look in Annie’s face—a pallid and very weary look—had gone to her heart, and touched her in spite of herself. Now, even though little Nan loved her, Hester would save Annie could she do so not at her own expense.
Look, however, as she would, nowhere could she find Miss Drummond. She called and called, but no sleepy voice replied. Susan, indeed, knew better; she had curled herself up in a hammock which hung between the boughs of a shady tree, and though Hester passed under her very head, she was sucking lollipops and going off comfortably into the land of dreams, and had no intention of replying. Hester wandered down the shady walk, and at its farther end she was gratified by the sight of little Nan, who, under her nurse’s charge, was trying to string daisies on the grass. Hester sat down by her side, and Nan climbed over and made fine havoc of her neat print dress, and laughed, and was at her merriest and best.
“I hear say that that naughty Miss Forest has done something out-and-out disgraceful,” whispered the nurse.