“I’ll plait it in four, like I used to do Bridgie’s when she went visiting. You wouldn’t believe the style there is to ut. Esmeralda said no one would believe that it was really her own. It was for all the world as if she had bought a plait and stuck it on. I’ll make yours look like that too, if you’ll give me time!”
“Oh, I’ll give you time!” laughed Kate pleasantly. Her conscience misgave her when she thought of her behaviour during the last days, and saw how ready the child was to forgive the cold contempt with which she had been treated. It was pleasant, too, to hear again of Bridgie and Esmeralda, who had been so long unmentioned, and who must really be the funniest creatures! And now that the poor little scrap was to be punished in such drastic fashion, one might venture to show pity without being accused of encouraging wickedness. After all, she had so far been convicted of no worse crime than obstinacy.
Unfortunately for Pixie, some of her companions took a different view of Miss Phipps’s decision, seeing in it a proof that the Principal at least was convinced of her guilt, and so felt themselves bound to follow her example by ostracising the offender. Some of Lottie’s followers were among the number, and that young lady found herself in the difficult position of being drawn two ways at once, for she had vowed to befriend Pixie, yet was loth to risk her popularity by acting in opposition to the general feeling. She took refuge in an easy neutrality, remaining silent when gibing words were passed from mouth to mouth, and avoiding every opportunity of coming into contact with Pixie herself. With so many girls about and the rush of examination work on hand, this was easy enough to accomplish, for Lottie was ambitious, and made special effort to come out in a good position on the list. Every evening she pored over books to “stew” up the subject of the next day’s exam, and every morning seated herself before her desk, and became immediately immersed in the paper before her. Oh, those papers, what agony and confusion of spirit they brought to one poor scholar at least! Pixie had been informed that the secret of examination work was to carefully read over the list of questions, and then set to work at once on the one she could answer best, be it number one or six; but what was a poor girl to do when she was convinced that she could not answer one at all? No one had even imagined such a position, and yet it was the one in which she found herself over and over again during those last miserable days. She was so unused to examination work that the formal wording of the questions frequently disguised their meaning, and made her imagine ignorance when in reality she could have answered correctly enough; and oh, what misery to look around the room and see every other girl scribbling for her life, and looking as if the only difficulty was lack of time to write all she knew!
Pixie’s mode of proceeding was to print an elaborate heading to her paper, and while away a quarter of an hour in adding ornamental flourishes to the double lines, and in elaborately darkening the down-strokes of her capitals. Then she would scribble on her blotting-paper, dropping intentional blots upon a clean page, and weaving them into a connected picture with no little skill and ingenuity. At this point a sharp reminder from teacher or scholar would bring her back to another melancholy perusal of the paper, and she would read and read the questions, in the melancholy hope of finding them grown more easy for the time of waiting.
Sometimes a query was put in so straightforward a form that it was possible to answer it in a single word, and then with glee Pixie would print “Question two” in ornamental characters, and write “Yes!” underneath it with a glow of exhilaration. At other times, as in the grammar paper, a question would make no calls on the memory, but would, so to speak, supply its own material, when she attacked it with more haste than discretion in her delight at finding something which she could really accomplish.
To give an example—Miss Bruce, the English teacher, quoted the sentence, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child!” and asked to have it paraphrased so as to show the two predicates which made it into a complex sentence. Pixie licked her lips over this opportunity, and squeak, squeak, squeak, went her pen along the paper, making the other girls look up and raise their eyebrows at one another in surprised comment. Writing at last, and so eagerly too! Pixie must surely have an inspiration at last; and so she had, for the big straggly writing set forth an extraordinary sentence: “How sharper it is to have an ungrateful child, than it is to have a serpent’s tooth!”
“Humph!” mused Pixie, gnawing her pen, “there’s a queer sound to it too. If I didn’t know for sure it was right, I’d be just as certain it was wrong!” and so the paraphrase remained, to astonish the eyes of Miss Bruce, and give her a hearty laugh in the midst of the dreary work of reading examination papers that evening.
“Well, who comes out first in the exams it is impossible to say, but there is no doubt who will be last! I don’t think Pixie O’Shaughnessy will get more than a dozen marks for a single paper she has written,” was the remark of a certain Evelyn, one of the leaders of the anti-Pixie faction, on the day before the breaking-up party. “We used to think her clever, but it was only a bubble, which has collapsed utterly the last few weeks. A guilty conscience—that’s my explanation! I call her a hardened little wretch, for she doesn’t seem to mind a bit not being allowed to come down to-morrow. You might have thought that she would be perfectly miserable, but instead of that she really seems in better spirits than before.”
“She does, and she likes to hear about the party, too! Just watch her when we are talking about it, and she is all eyes and ears. We saw some of the refreshments coming in to-day, and she positively beamed! I said, ‘Those are for supper to-morrow!’ and she said, ‘Are they as nice as usual? Do you think it will be as grand as last year? Will you have every single thing just the same as if Miss Phipps hadn’t been angry?’ I said that if Miss Phipps did a thing at all, she would do it properly, and that I was quite sure it would be quite as ‘grand,’ and she chuckled with delight, just as if she were going herself. I can’t make her out.”
“Perhaps she thinks that Miss Phipps will relax at the last moment, but if she does, she is very much mistaken. There will be no pardon for her until she speaks the truth. As I said before, I believe she is just a hardened little wretch who doesn’t care what happens to her, and that is why she doesn’t show any sign of feeling.”