“I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, Miss Ashton, to hurt Marion Parke’s feelings! I like her so much; I think she is—is, why is about the best girl in the whole school. I only meant—why I meant he was such an old codger it was real funny; I thought it would make a nice tableau, and I never thought Marion would recognize it: I wouldn’t have done it for the world!”
Then she stopped, looked earnestly in Miss Ashton’s face, and asked,—
“Do you believe me, Miss Ashton?”
Now, Miss Ashton knew Kate to be a very impulsive girl, doing many foolish, and often wrong things, only sometimes sorry for them, so she did not receive her excited apologies with the consideration which they really deserved.
She said, perhaps a little coldly,—
“I am glad you have come to see the matter both more kindly and reasonably, Kate. Yes! I do believe you: I do not doubt you feel all you say; but, Kate, you are so easily tempted by what seems to you fun. I can’t make you see, fun that becomes personal in a way to injure the feelings of any one ceases to be 88 fun, becomes cruelty. There is a great deal of that in this school this term. Hardly a day passes but some of the girls come to me crying because their feelings have been wounded, and I am truly grieved to say, you are oftener the cause of it than any other girl. To be both witty and wise is a great gift; to be witty without being wise is a great misfortune; sometimes I think it has been your misfortune. You are not a cruel girl. You are at bottom a kind girl; yet see how you wound! You didn’t mean to hurt Marion Parke; you like her, yet you did: you made fun of an old country cousin, whose visit must have been a trial to her. You are two Kates, one thinks only of the fun and the éclat of a witty tableau; the other would have done and said the kindest and the prettiest things to make Marion Parke happy. Which of these Kates do you like best?” Miss Ashton now laid her hand lovingly over the hands of the excited girl, who answered her with her eyes swimming in tears, “Your kind, Miss Ashton.” Then she put up her lips for the never-failing kiss, and went quietly away, but not to her own room.
There was something truly noble in the girl, after all. She went to Marion’s door and, knocking gently, asked if Marion would walk with her to the grove.
Much surprised, but pleased, Marion readily consented, and the two went out in the early darkness of an October night alone, the girls whom they met in the corridors staring at them as they passed.
