The girls walked quietly side by side for a few minutes longer. Molly was talking to Hannah Joyce. The one subject of conversation on every side was the prize—the great prize, the startling, amazing prize, the Howard miniature. Oh who would get it, who would be the lucky individual to possess such an inestimable treasure?
CHAPTER XV.
THE CULPRITS IN COUNCIL.
While Kitty and Jessie were having a confab of deep interest to themselves, a conversation which was, indeed, to mean tremendous results by-and-by, Hannah Joyce and Molly walked together. Molly had taken a fancy to Hannah; she belonged, of course, to the Lower School, and could never be a great friend like Alison Maude or Bridget O’Donnell, but nevertheless she could be a friend, and there was something which attracted Molly now in Hannah’s rather plain little freckled face. It struck Molly as she watched the girl that Hannah would have a very great chance of winning the prize on the score of expression, for Hannah’s small blue eyes were honest, and when she smiled her lips had a wonderfully kindly curve about them, and when she looked her friends in the face her friends were quite certain that Hannah Joyce would never do a mean or shabby thing. But, nevertheless, Hannah looked troubled to-night; she had indeed looked troubled ever since that terrible accident which had occurred during the first day of term. Yes, it was invariably spoken of as an “accident;” no one dared think of it in any other way, to do that would be too unspeakably dreadful.
“Now, Hannah,” said Molly, slipping her hand inside Hannah’s thin little arm, “what do you think about the big prize? Isn’t it altogether too astounding?”
“It is indeed,” said Hannah, and she sighed.
“It would be the very thing for you, Hannah, if you got it.”
“Yes,” answered Hannah gravely, “it would be the making of me. You don’t know, Molly, for I have never told you, how difficult it was for father and mother to send me to The Red Gables at all. You see, mother won’t send a girl to a school without paying the full terms, and it is also one of Mrs. Fleming’s rules that there is to be no abatement of terms in any case whatsoever. She says she can and will help in other ways, but not in that. Every girl must stand on her own merits in this school, or not be here. Well, I can’t describe to you how father and mother have toiled and saved and denied themselves to send me here. You see, I’m the only girl, and the boys—Jack and Tom and Harry—are all much older; and mother was at this school herself, and simply said, the moment I was born, that I must come here to be educated. From the very first she and father saved up for this object, and here I am. But, oh Molly, it is quite too torturing to think of that prize! If what Mrs. Fleming says is true, it would make all the difference—all the difference.”
“Of course what Mrs. Fleming says is true, Hannah; how can you even imagine anything else, you silly girl? And why shouldn’t you try for the prize and win it too? I suppose I oughtn’t to tell you; but I know the literary part of the prize is to be won by a sort of graduated scale—I heard Miss Greene talking about it—so that each girl, whether of the Lower or the Upper School, should have an equal chance. You mustn’t think too badly of yourself, Hannah, I am sure your abilities are quite up to the average; and then this prize doesn’t only mean ability, it means other and greater things.”
“I know, I know,” said Hannah, “and it isn’t for a single moment that I think so very badly of myself; it isn’t on that account at all, Molly, but I can’t—try for the prize.”
“You can’t! Nonsense, Hannah! what do you mean?”