“I hate cats!” burst from Mabel.
Annie turned pale for a minute; but her self-composure did not long desert her. “Being a poet, you know, you’re quite certain to be a little mad at times,” she remarked. “All poets are. I suppose you had a mad fit, dear Mabel, when you wrote about your favourite cat. I thought so.”
“I think so, and I think I am mad now,” said Mabel, marching away from the others as she spoke, and plunging into the cool depths of the paddock.
At that moment, more than cats, she hated herself; she hated Annie; she hated Priscilla. What an awful tissue of lies she was weaving round herself! Surely another year at Mrs Lyttelton’s school would have been much better than this. But, alas! it is not given to us to retrace our steps. Mabel had taken up a position, and there was nothing for it now but to abide by it. To confess all that she had done, to demand the money back from Priscilla, to stay on at school, were greater feats than she had courage to perform; and even if she were willing to do this, was not Annie always by her side—Annie, who did not repent, who was feathering her own nest so nicely, and who was priding herself on having overcome the immense difficulty of proving poor, stupid Mabel a poet?
The great day of the prize-giving followed soon after, and, to the unbounded astonishment of the girls, Mabel Lushington’s essay on “Idealism” won the first literature prize.
The essays were not read by the girls themselves, but by one of the teachers who had a beautiful voice and that dear enunciation which makes every word tell. The vote in favour of Mabel was unanimous. Her paper had thought; it had even style. In all respects it was far above the production of an ordinary schoolgirl, and beyond doubt it was far and away the best essay written.
Priscilla’s paper passed muster, but it did not even win the second prize. Mabel looked quite modest and strikingly handsome when the great prize was bestowed upon her—a magnificent edition of all the great English poets, bound in calf and bearing the school coat-of-arms.
Mrs Lyttelton, more astonished than pleased, was nevertheless forced to congratulate Mabel. She turned soon afterwards to one of the girls.
“I must confess,” she said, “that I never was so surprised in my life.”
“I should have been just as amazed as you,” answered Constance, “but for the fact that there is far more in Mabel than any one has the least idea of. She is a poet, you know.”