“Yes; if she lets me alone!” pointing to Miss Sharpe.
“You must do as your teacher says, child. Now, do be a good little girl, and don’t talk.” And the sweet-voiced young lady patted Pet’s black curly head kindly, and went back to her place.
Miss Sharpe, looking as if she would like to pounce upon Pet, and pound the life out of her, relapsed scowling into her seat; and Pet, curling her lip contemptuously at the cross teacher, took a lead pencil out of her pocket and began amusing herself drawing caricatures of her all over the book she held in her hand.
A profound silence again fell on the hot, close classe, and the girls bent over to-morrow’s tasks; now and then however, smiling slyly at each other, and glancing significantly at the new-comer, whose short half-hour in school had already created a sensation quite unparalleled in all the past history of the establishment, and which was destined to fill sixty letters home to “papa and mama” next time they wrote. Then, in half an hour more, a bell loudly rung, and every girl jumped eagerly up. This was the signal that school for the day was dismissed; and books, slates and pencils were hustled hastily out of sight; and two by two the girls marched through the now open folding-doors, beginning with the tallest, through the long hall staircase, through another hall, out of a side-room, and into an immense play-ground, furnished with wings, skipping-ropes, hoops and everything else necessary for recreation and amusement.
But no longer were hoops, and swings, and skipping-ropes seized with loud shouts as heretofore; newer and more attractive game was in view now, and every one crowded around our Pet, surveying her with open eyes as if she were some natural curiosity.
But Pet had no intention of standing there to be looked at and cross-questioned; and breaking through the ring with the yell of an Ojibewa Indian, she sprung into one of the swings, and invited “some of ’em to come and swing her.”
Like hops in beer, Pet’s presence seemed to throw the whole assembly in a ferment hitherto unknown. The swings flew wildly; the skipping-ropes went up and down with lightning-like velocity; the hoops whirled and flew over the ground in a way that must have astonished even themselves, if hoops ever can be astonished. The girls raced, and ran, and skipped, and laughed as they had never done before; and the noise and uproar waxed “fast and furious.” And wherever the fun was highest, the laughter loudest, the excitement wildest, there you might find Pet, the center and origin of it all. Cross Miss Sharpe, who had been sent out to look after them, and see that none of them broke their necks, if possible, wrung her hands in despair at the awful din, and rushed hither and thither, scolding, shaking, threatening, and vociferating at the top of her lungs; but all in vain. They were every one going crazy—that was evident; and that little minx, who had come there that day to throw the whole school in convulsions, was the cause of it all.
But even school-girls, with lungs, and throats, and faces very often of brass, must get exhausted at last; and after an hour’s steady screaming and yelling, the whole assemblage shrieked, laughed and shouted themselves into hoarseness and comparative quiet.
Pet, somewhat fatigued after her exertions, was seated in the midst of a group of girls, telling, in solemn tones, a most awful “raw-head and bloody bones” ghost story, which she “made up” as she went along, and which was destined to deprive at least twenty little individuals of a wink of sleep that night.
Every one was bending eagerly forward, listening breathlessly to Pet, who had just got “Jack” into the “haunted castle,” and was announcing the coming of a “great big black man, with red-hot coals for eyes, and flames of fire coming out of his mouth,” when a thin, sharp shadow fell over them, and, looking up with a terrified start, they beheld Miss Sharpe standing over them.