Thus far she had answered nothing correctly, and feeling puzzled to know how to proceed, Guy stepped into the adjoining room to consult with the doctor, but he was gone. So returning again to Madeline, Guy resumed the examination by asking her how “minus into minus could produce plus.”
Again Maddy was at fault, and her low-spoken “I don’t know” sounded like a wail of despair. Did she know anything? Guy wondered, and feeling some curiosity now to ascertain that fact, he plied her with questions philosophical, questions algebraical, and questions geometrical, until in an agony of distress Maddy raised her hands deprecatingly, as if she would ward off any similar questions, and sobbed out:
“Oh, sir, no more of this. It makes my head so dizzy. They don’t teach that in common schools. Ask me something I do know.”
Suddenly it occurred to Guy that he had gone entirely wrong, and mentally cursing himself for the blockhead the doctor had called him, he asked, kindly:
“What do they teach? Perhaps you can enlighten me?”
“Geography, arithmetic, grammar, history, and spelling-book,” Madeline replied, untying and throwing off her bonnet, in the vain hope that it might bring relief to her poor, giddy head, which throbbed so fearfully that all her ideas seemed for the time to have left her.
This was a natural consequence of the high excitement under which she was laboring, and so, when Guy did ask her concerning the books designated, she answered but little better than before, and he was wondering what he should do next, when the doctor’s welcome step was heard, and leaving Madeline again, he repaired to the next room to report his ill success.
“She does not seem to know anything. The veriest child ought to do better than she has done. Why, she has scarcely answered half a dozen questions correctly.”
This was what poor Maddy heard, though it was spoken in a low whisper; but every word was distinctly understood, and burned into her heart’s core, drying her tears and hardening her into a block of marble. She knew that Guy had not done her justice, and this helped to increase the torpor stealing over her. Still she did not lose a syllable of what was said in the back office, and her lip curled scornfully when she heard Guy remark, “I pity her; she is so young, and evidently takes it so hard. Maybe she’s as good as they average. Suppose we give her the certificate, anyway?”
Then Dr. Holbrook spoke, but to poor, bewildered Maddy his words were all a riddle. It was nothing to him, whether she knew anything or not,—who was he that he should be dictating thus? There seemed to be a difference of opinion between the young men, Guy insisting that out of pity she should not be rejected; and the doctor demurring on the ground that he ought to be more strict, especially with the first one. As usual, Guy overruled, and seating himself at the table, the doctor was just commencing, “I hereby certify——” while Guy was bending over him, when the latter was startled by a hand laid firmly on his arm, and, turning quickly, he confronted Madeline Clyde, who, with her short hair pushed back from her blue-veined forehead, her face as pale as ashes, save where a round spot of purplish red burned upon her cheeks, and her eyes gleaming like coals of fire, stood before him.