“It will,” remarked Berty, decidedly.
“Well, my course is clear,” said the Judge. “I feel it. The spectacle of that little sick creature sitting up at night, studying in a cheerless room, haunted me. I have put her where she is warm and comfortable, where her very environment is enough to cheer and uplift her.”
“How does she get on with the other girls?”
The Judge smiled. “Peculiarly. I fancied that she would have a hard time with them on account of her different social station. However, I said to her, ‘No stories, Airy. Tell the truth about yourself.’”
“And did she?”
“She did,” said the Judge, laconically. Then, after a time, he laughed suddenly and heartily. “The truth in her case so far transcended the schoolgirls’ anticipations or realizations that they looked upon it as the wildest absurdity.”
Berty seemed puzzled.
The Judge repressed his amusement, and looking down at her in his fatherly, benevolent way said, “Imagine to yourself, my dear Mrs. Everest, a schoolroom full of girls, all interested in the newcomer—I have this straight from Airy—she, poor child, sitting grim and composed, ready for anything. Finally, one girl plucks up courage enough to ask Airy what her name is, where she has lived, how many servants her mother kept, what her father’s business is, what church she goes to, how much money she has in the bank, how many silk dresses her mother owns, and so on.”
Berty laughed gleefully. “I know them—that is schoolgirls—they are so delightfully silly. What did Airy say?”
“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”