The girls were divided between horror and delight. Dared she? Really! Would it hurt? What would Miss Phipps say? Did she really think she ought? But their agitation acted as fuel to Pixie’s determination, and she would only laugh and lean over the banisters, experimenting with the long green rope, and altering the length until it met with her approval.
Five minutes passed, and nobody appeared; ten minutes, and the conspirators were beginning to grow impatient, when from below came the unmistakable sound of an ascending footstep. The orders of the chief had been that when this happened her attendants were to withdraw to a safe distance, so that no movement nor sound of muffled laughter should warn the victim of her peril; so the girls retreated obediently, leaving Pixie to crouch on the floor until the eventful moment when a head appeared on the landing six steps below. It came—the top of a smooth, brown head, and on the moment out flew the rope, whirled into space with a skilful jerk which sent the noose flying wide, and with an accuracy of aim which brought it right round the neck of the new-comer. She squealed indeed, but horror of horrors! she squealed in French, with such staccato “Oh’s” and “Ah’s” of astonishment as could only have come from one person in the house. It was Mademoiselle herself! and lifting her glance she beheld six horrified faces peering at her over the banisters, six pairs of startled eyes, six mouths agape with dismay. She looked, and then, as it seemed with one stride, was in their midst, with her hands gripping Pixie by the shoulders.
Now it happened that Mademoiselle was in her most irritable mood this afternoon, for all day long she had been struggling against what, for convenience’ sake, she called a headache, but which might more honestly have been described as a heartache instead. A teacher cannot explain to thirty pupils that she has received a letter from home which has seemed to drop a veil before the sky, but such letters come all the same, and make it difficult to bear the hundred and one little annoyances and trials of temper which fall to her lot. Mademoiselle’s letter had told of the illness of a beloved father, and as she dared not sit down and have a good cry to relieve her feelings, she was an a pent-up state of nerves which made her the worst possible subject for a practical joke. The rope in Pixie’s hand marked her out as the principal offender, and she was called to order in a breathless stream of French which left her dumb and bewildered.
“I—I can’t understand!” she stammered, and Mademoiselle struggled to express herself in sufficiently expressive English. “You bad girl! You rude, bad girl! What ’ave you done? What you mean playing your treecks on me? I will not ’ave it. I will complain to Miss Phipps. How dare you throw your strings about to catch me as I come upstairs! Impertinent! Disobedient!”
“P–please, Mademoiselle, it was a lasso! I didn’t know it was you. I said I would do it to the first person who came, and I didn’t see your face. It was only a joke.”
“A joke! You catch me by the throat, you ’ang me by the neck, and you call it a joke! You wicked, impertinent girl, you shall be punished for this!”
Pixie heaved a sigh so sepulchral that it might almost have been called a groan instead.
“It’s just my luck!” she said dismally. “When I tried to show off before Pat and the girls, I couldn’t do it one time in a hundred, and just now, when I’d have no credit, but only get into trouble, I caught you the very first try!”
Did she mean to be impertinent? Mademoiselle looked down with sharp suspicion, but even in her excited condition she could not mistake that downcast look, and troubled, disconsolate frown. Her voice grew a trifle less sharp, but she was very angry still.
“You ought to be ashamed playing such treecks! It is always the same thing—there is no peace since you ’ave come. These girls were quite good and mild, but you make them as wild as yourself. I will teach you to be’ave better. You will come with me to the schoolroom and write out a verrrb!”