Mrs. Scollard took the cat's advice, and hurried in the same direction that he was going, holding her candle high above her head to throw the light into the gloom before her. There, prostrate behind the old Bittenbender trunk, lay the genius rejected by the ungrateful Crestvillians.
Mrs. Scollard set down her candle with mingled solicitude for Laura herself, and for Laura's best dress, and with a gleam of amusement, now that her anxiety was relieved.
"Laura dear, come out," she said gently. "Be wise enough not to brood over a mistake that you will not make again."
Laura lifted her head quickly. "Mistake, mamma!" she cried. "I made no mistake. But do you think I can help minding being treated so ungratefully, even insulted by those horrid, ignorant people?"
"Come here, Laura," said her mother, in the tone which her children always obeyed.
Laura came forth, dusty, tear-stained, a wreck of her usual self-satisfied and trim little self. Her mother drew her on her knee as she seated herself on a chest, and began to smooth the tumbled hair, and to stroke the hot cheeks with a gentle hand.
"Let me show you the mistake, my dear," she said. "Here is a little girl, barely thirteen, who first of all prepares an entertainment, and gives it, not only without consulting her elders, but without their permission. You certainly have no right, Laura, to undertake a public appearance without asking leave. It is for this that you are punished; I knew that you would receive your just dues if I refrained from interfering, and I am glad that your punishment has been quite severe enough without one from me. For—and this is the second part of your mistake, and a part that affects your every action—you take your small self much too seriously, my Laura. You have talents, which I hope to have cultivated into value, but in the meantime they are but a childish promise of what may be. And because of them you plume yourself, hold yourself superior to your brother and sisters, who are in their way quite as clever as you in yours, and more clever in not overrating themselves. It is very stupid to be conceited in a world full of truly great things, my Laura. Another mistake was to allow yourself to feel and to speak to our neighbors to-night as if you were their superior. They were older than you, my dear, and you have been taught that people with fewer advantages than yourself may be quite as quick-witted; a very wholesome lesson! The audience which you invited to come to be addressed condescendingly was perfectly sweet-tempered and patient with the little girl who tried to patronize it. I am grateful to the Crestville people for understanding, and being so kind. So you are not to harbor bitterness, nor to go on making the old mistake of thinking that what a child like you does matters too much. You are to come down with mother, go to bed and go to sleep, a wiser little girl, saying to yourself: 'I shall never again be a conceited little goose!' and nobody will think twice of what was merely a little girl's folly in forgetting that she was a little girl. But she's her mother's little girl, so give me a kiss, and forget all about this evening, except its lessons. I wonder if I can find a place not too dusty to kiss?"
Laura submitted to her mother's caress, but did not respond to it with an answering smile. She followed the wavering candle-light down the stairs with faltering steps; she was weak and ill from excessive crying, and the fall of her pride had bruised her mentally black and blue. Jeunesse Dorée, bringing up the rear, was the only cheerful person of the three.
In the morning Laura was feverish and not fit to get up. Mrs. Scollard left her in Rosie's care—she needed only rest,—and went for a drive with Miss Bradbury, who had of late summoned courage to brave automobiles with Don Dolor under her personal guidance.
Gretta came up shortly after breakfast, bringing the fresh peas with which Miss Bradbury had asked her to supplement the crop of the Ark garden.