Miss Everett bent down quickly, and kissed her on the cheek.
“And my people knew who Mr Chester was because I’ve written of you, and they know that you have been kind to me, and that I’m fond of you, too. Oh Rhoda, you don’t know how lonely it feels to be a teacher sometimes, or how grateful we are to anyone who treats us as human beings, and not as machines. You don’t know how you have cheered me many a time.”
“But—but—I’ve been tiresome, and stupid, and rebellious. I’ve given you lots of trouble—”
“Perhaps, but you have been affectionate too, and seemed to like me a little bit, in spite of my lectures; and if it had not been for your kind words the hamper would never have come, so I insist upon thanking you as well as your mother. Many, many thanks, dear! I shall always re—” She stopped short suddenly, her attention arrested by the scraping of chairs within the parlour, and concluded in a very different tone, “The girls are coming! For pity’s sake don’t let Tom find us sentimentalising here! Fly, Rhoda, fly!” and off she ran along the corridor, flop, flop, flop, on her flat-soled shoes, as much in fear of the scrutiny of the head girl as the youngest Blue in the house!
Chapter Twelve.
Home Again.
The week of examination passed slowly by, and the morning dawned when the all-important lists were to be read aloud. The girls were tired after the strain, the teachers exhausted by the work of reading over hundreds of papers, and it was consequently a somewhat pale and dejected-looking audience which assembled in the Hall to hear the report.
Rhoda sat tense on her seat, and puzzled for some moments over the meaning of a certain dull, throbbing noise, before discovering that it was the beating of her own heart. It seemed to her morbid sensitiveness that every eye was upon her, that everyone was waiting to hear what place the new girl had taken. When Miss Bruce began to read she could hardly command herself sufficiently to listen, but the first mention of her own name brought her to her bearings with a shock of dismay. After all her work, her care, her preparation, to be so low as this, to take so poor a place! The mortification was so bitter that she would fain have hidden herself out of reach of consolation, but to her surprise, so far from condoling, teachers and pupils alike seemed surprised that she had done so well.