“But you have,” Queenie continued; “you have more than you know what to do with, people say, and I want you to give me some for her, because I like her—I don’t know why exactly, only I do, and did the first minute I saw her. I felt as if I wanted to hug her hard—as if she belonged to me; and you’ll do it, papa, I know you will! You’ll send little Margery La Rue to the same school with me.”
Mr. Hetherton did not reply to this, but asked numerous questions concerning his daughter’s acquaintance with Margery La Rue, whose mother was a hair-dresser, and expressed his displeasure with Celine for having taken her to such places.
“You are never to go there again, under any circumstances,” he said, and Reinette replied, promptly:
“Yes, I shall. I’ll run away every day and go there, and to worse places, too. I will go the Jardin, if you don’t give me the money for Margery, but if you do I will promise never to go there again—only Celine shall go for her to ride with me. I am bound to do that!”
And so she gained her point, and the next day Celine was sent to Lisette to make inquiries concerning Mrs. La Rue. As these proved satisfactory, arrangements were made with the principal of the English school to receive little Margery as a day pupil at half pay, in consideration of her performing some menial service in the school-room by way of dusting the desks and putting the books in order after school was over.
Queenie was delighted, and from the day when Margery became a pupil in the English school, she was her avowed champion, and stood by her always, and fought for her sometimes when a few of the French girls sneered at her position as duster of their books.
Naturally quick to learn, and easier to retain than Queenie, as Margery always called her, she soon outstripped her in all their studies, and was of great service in helping her to master her lessons, and acquit herself with a tolerable degree of credit.
But for Margery, who would go patiently over the lesson time after time with her indolent friend, Queenie would often have been in disgrace, for she was not particularly fond of books, and lacked the application necessary to a thorough scholar. Once, when she had committed a grave misdemeanor which had been strictly forbidden on pain of heavy punishment, Margery was suspected and found guilty, and though she knew Queenie to be the culprit, she did not speak, but stood up bravely to receive the chastisement which was to be administered in the presence of the whole school, and was to be unusually severe as a warning to others. Margery was very pale as she took her place upon the platform, and held out her beautiful white arm and hand to the master, and her blue eyes glanced just once wistfully and pleadingly toward the corner where Queenie sat, her own eyes shut, and her fists clenched tightly together until the first blow fell upon the innocent Margery. Then swift as lightning she went to the rescue, and before the astounded master knew what she was doing she had wrested the ruler from him, and hurling it across the room sprang into a chair, and had him by the collar, and even by the hair, while she cried out:
“You vile, nasty man, don’t you touch Margery again. If you do I will pull every hair out of your head. You might have known she didn’t do it. It was I, and I am nastier and viler than you, for I kept still just because I was afraid to be hurt, and let her bear it for me. I am the guilty one. I did it, and she knew it and never told. Beat me to a pumice if you want to. I deserve it:” and jumping from the chair and crossing the floor, Queenie picked up the ruler, and giving it to the master, held out her little fat hand for the punishment she merited. But by this time the entire school had become demoralized, as it were, and the pupils thronged around their bewildered teacher, begging him to spare Queenie, who became almost as much a heroine as Margery, because that, notwithstanding her cowardice at the first, she had at the last shown so much genuine moral courage and nobleness.
Queenie wrote the whole transaction to her father, who was in Norway, and asked that as a recompense to Margery she be invited to spend the summer vacation at Chateau des Fleurs, where Queenie was going with Celine. To this Mr. Hetherton consented, and all the long, bright days of summer Margery was at Chateau des Fleurs, which seemed to her like Paradise. Nothing could exceed Queenie’s devotion to her from that time onward, and when at eighteen she left school, Queenie stood by her still, and found her a situation as governess in an English family who lived in Geneva, and when, after a few months, Margery said she did not like the life of a governess, as it deprived her of all her independence of action, and made her a mere block, subjecting her to insults from the sons of the house and guests of the family, Reinette, who knew her perfect taste in everything pertaining to a lady’s toilet, and the skill with which she fitted her own dresses, suggested that she should try dressmaking as an experiment, without the formality of regularly learning the trade, which would take so much valuable time. So Margery set up as an amateur in the pleasant apartments in Rue de la Paix, where Mrs. La Rue had lived since the death of her husband, which occurred during Margery’s second year in school.