It may seem a thing almost unnecessary and 44 unkind to suggest, that even the most brilliant scholarship could not give a girl a high standing in a school of this kind, if it were unaccompanied with the thousand little marks of conduct which attest the lady.
Maria, after her rebuke from Miss Barton, left the table in a noisy flood of tears, of course the sympathy of all the girls going with her. Miss Barton was pale, and there were tears in her eyes; but no one noticed her, unless it was to throw toward her disapproving looks.
The fact was, that she had spoken to Maria again and again, kindly and in private, about this same piece of ill-manners, and the girl had paid no heed to it. There seemed nothing to be left to her but the public rebuke, which, wounding, might cure.
Marion took the whole in wonderingly. Was this, then, considered a part of that education for which purpose what seemed to her such a wealth of treasures had been gathered?
Here were lectures, libraries, art galleries, beautiful grounds, excellent teachers, a bevy of happy companions, and yet among them so small a thing as a girl’s handling cake at the table, and choosing the largest and the best piece, was made a matter of comment and reproof, and, for the first time since she had been in the academy, had raised a little storm of rebellion on the part of pupils towards a teacher.
When she went to her room, Susan had already 45 told the others, who sat at different tables, what had happened. Susan was excited and angry, but Dorothy said quietly,—
“And why should Maria have taken the best bit of cake, even if it had been on the top? I wouldn’t.”
“No: you would have been the last girl in the school to take the best of anything,” said Gladys, giving Dorothy a hug and a kiss; “and as for Miss Barton, she’s a dear, anyway, and I dare say she feels at this moment twice as bad as Maria.”
“Sensible girl, am I not, Marion?” seeing Marion come into the room. “Don’t you take sides in any such things; you mind what I say! Teachers know what they are doing; and if any of us are reproved, why, the long and short of it is, nine times out of ten we deserve it. It’s ‘for the improvement of our characters’ that everything is done here.”
“I believe you,” said Marion heartily; and, trifling as the event was, she put it with the long array of educational advantages which she had come from the far West to seek. “It requires attention to little as well as great things”—she thought, wisely for a girl of sixteen—“to accomplish the object of this finishing-school.”