Betty lay very still for the whole of that hour. Her thoughts were busy. She was haunted by Rule I., and by the passionate temptation to ignore it and yet pretend that she would keep it—in short, to be a member of the Specialities under false colors. One minute she was struggling hard with the trouble which raged within her, the next minute she was making up her mind to decline to be associated with the Specialities.
When the hour had quite expired she sprang to her feet. Oh yes, her head still ached! But what did that matter? She could not be bothered with a trifling thing like a mere headache. She ran upstairs to the Vivian attic. Dickie was in his cage. Betty remembered what terrible trouble she had had to catch him on the day when she received a copy of the rules. She shook her head at him now, and said, “Ah Dickie, you’re a bad boy! I am not going to let you out of your cage again in a hurry.” Then she went out.
The wind had changed during the night, and heavy clouds were coming up from the north. Betty felt herself much colder than she had ever done in Scotland. She shivered, and walked very fast. She passed the celebrated oak-tree where she and her sisters had hidden during their first day at school. She went on to the place where the three little gardens were marked for their benefit. But up to the present no Vivian had touched the gardens, and there were the black remains of the bonfire where the poor Scotch heather had been burnt almost in the center of Betty’s patch of ground.
Oh, the school was horrible—the life was horrible! Oh why had she ever come here? She wanted to be a Speciality; but she could not, it was not in her. She hated—yes, she hated—Fanny Crawford more each minute, and she could never love those other uninteresting girls as though they were her sisters. In analyzing her feelings very carefully, she came to the conclusion that she only wanted to join the Specialities in order to be Margaret’s friend. She knew quite well what privileges would be accorded to her were she a member; and she also knew—for she had been told—that it was a rare thing to allow a girl so lately come to the school to take such an important position.
Betty had a natural love of power. With a slight shudder she walked past the little patches of ground and across what she contemptuously called the miserable common. This common marked the boundaries of Mrs. Haddo’s school. There were iron railings at least six feet high guarding it from the adjacent land. The sight of these railings was absolute torture to Betty. She said aloud, “Didn’t I know the whole place was a prison? But prison-bars sha’n’t keep me long in restraint!”
She took out her handkerchief, and, pulling up some weedy grass, put the handkerchief on one spiked bar and the grass on the other, and thus protecting herself, made a light bound over the fence. The exercise and the sense of freedom did her good. She laughed aloud, and continued her walk through unexplored regions. She could not go very fast, however; for she was hindered here by and there by a gateway, and here again by a farmstead, and yet again by a cottage, with little children running about amongst the autumn flowers.
“How can people live in a place like this?” thought Betty.
Then, all of a sudden, two ferocious dogs rushed out upon the girl, clamored round her, and tried to stop her way. Betty laughed softly. There was a delightful sound in her laugh. Probably those dogs had never heard its like before. It was also possible, notwithstanding the fact that Betty was wearing a new dress, that something of that peculiar instinct which is imparted to dogs told these desperate champions that Betty had loved a dog before.
“Down, silly creature!” said Betty, and she patted one on the head and put her arm on the neck of the other. Soon they were fawning about her and jumping on her and licking her hands. She felt thoroughly happy now. Her headache had quite vanished. The dogs, the darlings, were her true friends! There was a little piece of grass quite close to where they had attacked her, and she squatted deliberately down on it and invited the dogs to stretch themselves by her side. They did so without a minute’s delay. They were in raptures with her, and one dog only growled when she paid too much attention to the other.