The Girl from the Big Horn Country

by Mary Ellen Chase

But Imogene kept her own counsel, and no one knew what Miss Wallace had said. Neither did they learn that night from Virginia of her interview with Miss Green. Her strange silence during the conference quelled the curiosity which prompted them to ask; and, when the nine-thirty bell rang, they went home, feeling that she was queer some way but that they liked her more than ever.

The world had suddenly lost its brightness for Virginia. She undressed in silence, and was in bed before Priscilla, who sat on the edge of her cot a moment before going to her own, and hugged her room-mate sympathetically. Virginia returned the hug with a bear-like one of her own, and kissed Priscilla good-night, but still she could not talk. Neither could she go to sleep. Long after Priscilla’s breathing showed that she had forgotten indignation and all else, Virginia lay awake, choking back a great, obstinate lump of homesickness, which would rise in her throat. She longed for her father. He would understand as no one else could. She longed for Don, who would call Miss Green “an old prune.” Most of all she longed for her own big country, where, her poor injured heart told her, people didn’t look for impoliteness. And just this morning she had been so happy!

Then the tears came, and she sobbed into her pillow. “I’m not plucky at all,” she thought, “because I am homesick, and I don’t care if I am!” She felt better after a good cry, and thought she could go to sleep, but the room seemed warm and close, though the windows were open. She got out of bed, put on her kimono, and went to the French windows which opened upon the porch. The moon had set, but the sky was clear and star-filled. Unhesitatingly she opened the doors and stepped out. From where she stood no trees obstructed her view of the campus. The buildings stood dark and dim among the trees. It was so still that she could hear the brook falling over the stones, half a mile away. She felt better out there under the sky—somewhat as she felt among the mountains at home.

All at once she heard steps on the gravel walk. Who could be out so late. A bulky form emerging from the firs and coming along the walk below where she stood answered her question. It was Michael, the old night watchman. Were it not for fear of disturbing some one she would call to him, for she liked his funny Irish ways, and already they had become good friends. She went nearer the railing to watch him as he walked slowly toward West Cottage, and as she moved a board in the floor of the porch creaked.

Michael looked up hastily, and descried her figure. He had been too long at St. Helen’s not to know that young ladies on porches at midnight usually meant mischief, and he hurriedly retraced his steps toward The Hermitage, rounded the cottage, and—truly Fate was unkind!—rapped on Miss Green’s instead of Miss Wallace’s window.

So perfectly innocent was Virginia that she did not for one moment connect Michael’s return with herself. Miss Green’s room was on the other side of the cottage from her own, and she could not hear Michael’s quiet warning. Therefore, she was surprised and not a little startled when she found herself five minutes later enveloped in a strange light. She turned around quickly to see in the doorway Miss Green, clothed in a gray flannel wrapper, and armed with a miniature search-light, which always accompanied her on her night journeyings. Virginia felt a strange desire to laugh. Miss Green’s scant locks were arranged in curl-papers about her forehead; she still wore her spectacles; and the combination gave the sinister effect of a beetle. But the look on Miss Green’s countenance checked the unborn laugh.

“What are you doing here on the porch at midnight?” Miss Green’s words were punctuated with pauses of horror.

“Something inside of me said I’d feel happier out here, Miss Green.”

Virginia’s honest eyes looked into Miss Green’s shrinking ones. Miss Green apparently felt uncomfortable. She wrestled again with that disagreeable sense of having been beaten. Slow as she was to perceive honesty, she could not doubt this girl who faced her with flushed cheeks and tear-swollen eyes. She stood aside, shivering in the night air, to let Virginia enter her room. Then she followed her. Once inside, she hesitated a moment, then locked the French windows, and slipped the key into her capacious pocket. Virginia’s unwavering eyes watched her. She cleared her throat nervously.

“I need hardly remind you, Virginia, that it is highly indecorous for a young lady to stand on a porch at midnight in a kimono! Moreover, let us ever avoid all appearance of evil.”