“I don’t pry into other people’s affairs,” said Jane, quite unruffled. “Most of ’em seem to like to talk, and I just listen—that’s all.”
“There’s the bell, now! Hang it, we’re late. Why can’t you—” but here Carl set off in a race for the school-house, outstripping the two squealing, panting twins. And in another moment, Jane, too, was scampering across the square as fast as her legs would carry her.
That was, in truth, not destined to be a very successful day for Jane. To begin with, she was marked “tardy” for the third time that month. The first classes went off passably; but she came to grief as she was congratulating herself on the fact that she had managed to scrape along fairly well.
With all her quickness and curiosity, Jane had small love for hard study; but her aptness in gathering the general sense of a lesson at almost a glance stood her in good stead, and with very little trouble on her part she succeeded in shining quite brilliantly in history, general science, and geography. When it came to mathematics however, she met her Waterloo.
This class was presided over by Miss Farrel, a vague old lady, with near-sighted, reproachful blue eyes, and an almost inaudible voice, who taught a dry subject in the dryest possible manner.
For some reason, Jane found it more difficult than ever to keep her mind on square roots and unknown quantities that morning. Her eyes wandered longingly to the window. It was open, for the day had grown warmer toward noon, and in the quiet square an old man was raking up the fallen leaves into a row of small bonfires, and lifting them in bundles into a little wheeled cart. Patiently he limped back and forth, stopping every now and then to push his old felt hat back on his head and mop his forehead with a colored handkerchief, which in between times waved jauntily from his hip pocket. The pungent smell of leaf smoke drifted in through the window. The golden and ruddy foliage of the elm-trees and lindens made a fretted canopy over the drowsy green, through which sifted the mellow light of an Indian summer sun.
Fat Lulu Pierson’s thick, glossy pig-tails next engrossed Jane’s attention. She took one gently in her fingers; the evenly clipped end of it reminded her of the brush that Sam Lung, the Chinese laundry-man used when he wrote out his receipts. She dipped it in the ink, and began to make hieroglyphics on her scratch-tablet. Then Lulu gave an impatient jerk, and the wet pig-tail just missed causing general disaster. Jane carefully took it again, dried it on her blotter, and made a serious effort to concentrate her attention by fixing her gaze gravely on Miss Farrel’s wrinkled face. But she soon found that she was merely wondering why that prim old dame took the trouble to wear a little bunch of false curls across her forehead—such a remarkable cluster, as smooth and crisp as spun glass, pinned with a little bow of black taffeta ribbon. And so honestly false—certainly they could not have been selected with the intention of deceiving, for not even Miss Farrel, near-sighted as she was, could have imagined for a moment that they matched the diminutive nubbin into which her own grey locks were twisted every morning.
“Why doesn’t she wear a wig? Though after all that auburn is rather nice. I don’t see why she doesn’t change ’em around sometimes—”
“Well, Jane, perhaps you can tell us,” Miss Farrel’s soft voice broke in upon these reflections, and Jane started as if she had been awakened from a sound sleep. She gasped, and then quickly recovering herself, said blandly,
“Yes, Miss Farrel.”