“I think thee has been sufficiently punished, Isabelle, and now I shall give thee a hot lemonade to warm thee up before thee goes to bed,” the kind voice went on.
Suddenly without warning, Isabelle threw herself on the couch and began to sob. Not like a child’s easy tears, but like the tortured sobbing of a nature long pent up. Mrs. Benjamin said nothing. She sat down on the couch, drew the child’s head into her lap, and let the spasm spend itself.
So it was that Isabelle, who never wept, spent her first evening at Hill Top School.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The period of adjustment to life at the Hill Top School was a very bewildering one to Isabelle. The excitement over Peggy’s accident was soon past, to that heroine’s intense regret. She prolonged her nervous prostration as long as possible, and was duly petted and made much of by the girls. Isabelle, full of remorse for the trouble she had brought upon her room-mate, adopted her as her special charge.
The routine of the school, if you could call it that, began. Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin had strange ideas in regard to the training of the young. They kept the school small, so that they might not be hampered in their experiments, and strangely enough, they drew their pupils largely from the families of the rich. When he was asked about this once, Mr. Benjamin said:
“It seems to be our mission to teach these little richlings to