CHAPTER IV.
MRS. ABBOTT’S EXPLANATION.
Perhaps it was a little bit of diplomacy on Mrs. Abbott’s part that provided an occupation out of the house for Miss Stubbs, while she talked of her very seriously to some of the scholars. Lily, who was as quick to act upon her good impulses as upon any others, had told her teacher frankly what had occurred. Mrs. Abbott received her confession sorrowfully, but made no comment at the time, simply asking the girl to call to her room those who had been present at the conversation.
Delia, Katie, Fannie Holmes, Bell Burgoyne, and Lily Dart, the Friendly Five, as they called themselves, took their seats rather shamefacedly, and waited to hear what Mrs. Abbott had to say.
If it had been any one but Mrs. Abbott the girls would have thought her afraid to begin. She certainly seemed much less composed than usual. She looked out of the window thoughtfully, rose and walked half a dozen times across the room, then took her seat again, looked keenly at the girls for a moment, and said:
“I hardly know whether or not to tell you something that will explain the presence in our school of a girl who is very different—I do not pretend to say she is not—from all who have ever been here. I hope I may help her by telling you, but sometimes I am afraid I shall do more harm than good by being frank.”
Here she hesitated, and the girls, who were wildly curious, were afraid she had arrived at the conclusion not to tell them any thing. She noticed their inquiring looks and smiled.
“I have made your lively imaginations expect more of a story than I really have to tell,” she said. “Last July, as you already know, I took Ethel and Candace for a six weeks’ stay in the Catskills. The hotel was on one mountain and faced another. In the deep valley between were several little houses, not clustered together for neighborly companionship, as you might suppose they would be in such a place, but each standing quite alone in what they call a ‘burnt-off’ clearing. The mountain air, while it strengthened me, made me wakeful, and, delightfully still as the place was, I could never sleep after the first ray of daylight broke through the sky. There were such glorious cloud effects that I thought I might as well turn my early wakefulness to good account; so the dawn of day always found me in shawls and wrapper sitting at the window of my bedroom.
“The clouds hang very near the earth among those heights; so in watching them I did not have to lift my eyes too high to see what was going on about me, although there was not much to see, except an occasional ox-team or a man on his way somewhere. But I began to notice after a while that one of the earliest living things astir after the birds was a little girl who brought a big pail up the hill, went around to the back door of the hotel, and presently came back with the pail filled with water, carrying it down the precipitous path quickly but with great care not to spill all its contents, as certainly any one not used to perpendicular paths would have done.
“To have made the journey thus loaded would have been a task for most people, but this little water-bearer came again and again. I have known her to carry down her load eleven times before the first bell rang to warn the hotel guests that it was time to leave their beds and prepare for breakfast.