CHAPTER IV.—MISS JULIA.
It was “high noon” in New York, as our English cousins say, but in a wider sense than our English cousins use it. Not only was it twelve by the clock, with the sun high in the heavens, flooding the streets with brilliant sunshine, but the whole city apparently was in the highest spirits. The sidewalks were alive with gayly dressed people, gayly liveried carriages rolled up and down the avenue, violets and lilacs were for sale at the flower-stands, and the children were out in crowds for an airing.
Here a little group of them, with unspeakable longing in their hearts, surrounded a grimy man who had snow-white puppies for sale; there another and larger group watched a wonderful ship in a glass case, riding angular green waves which rose and fell with the regularity of a pendulum, and some of them furtively glanced up now and then, with eyes full of astonished admiration, to the gray-bearded man who claims the honor of the invention.
But notwithstanding it was Saturday, with half the world bent on a holiday, and schools as a rule at a discount, there was one school over on the West side that threw open its doors to an eager company of scholars. It was a school where the children came because they loved to come, and no wonder. You had only to see the teachers to understand it. They were lovely-looking girls, with their bright, wide-awake faces and becoming, well-fitting dresses; enthusiastic, earnest girls, thoroughly abreast of the times, interested in everything, and fond of all that is high and ennobling—working in the sewing school this afternoon, attractive matinées notwithstanding, and talking it over in some bright circle this evening; girls, the very sight of whom must somehow have done good to the very dullest little maids upon their roll books. But queen among even this peerless company reigned “Miss Julia,” the superintendent, or whatever the proper name may be for the head teacher. She was lovely to look at, and lovely in spirit, and beyond that it is useless to attempt description, so impossible is it to put into words the indefinable charm that won every one to her. But with the bright May Saturday, about which we are writing, the afternoon for closing the school had come, and there was a wistful expression on the faces of many of the children. Not that they were exactly anxious to stitch on and on through the spring-time, when every healthy little body loves out-of-door life and lots of it, but no sewing school meant no Miss Julia; so, with reason, they looked less glad than sorry.
Miss Julia, as was her custom, had started in abundance of time from her old-fashioned home in Washington Square, but not too early, it seemed, to find at a corner near the chapel where the school was held, half a dozen little girls already on the look-out. As soon as they spied her they flocked down the street to meet her, and then with her in their midst flocked back again. Presently, in twos and threes, the young teachers began to arrive, and soon it was time to open the school and to settle down to the last day's lesson.
Courage Masterson happened to be in Miss Julia's own class, and was ordinarily a most apt little scholar; but on this particular Saturday her thoughts seemed to be everywhere rather than on her work; indeed, she had to rip out almost every stitch taken, until Miss Julia wondered what could have happened. Afterward, when the children had said their good-byes and gone home, and the teachers, with the exception of Miss Julia, had all left the building, Courage, who had been standing unnoticed in one corner, rushed up to her, burying her red-brown curls in the folds of her dress and sobbing fit to break her heart.
“Why, Courage, dear, what is the matter?” and Miss Julia, sitting down on one of the benches, drew Courage into her lap. “I was afraid all the lesson that something had gone wrong. Poor child! have you some new sorrow to bear?”
“No, Miss Julia; I am going to do just what I want to do most; I am going to live on a boat; but, oh! I can't bear to go away from you and Mary Duff.”