“With your permission,” indeed! Fred was incensed. If Mr. Fling had been a person of his own age, he would have said to him, and very properly, too, “I have no right to lend Dr. Gray’s horse, and you have no right to ask me for him.” But as Mr. Fling was at least a dozen years older than himself, such a speech would have been impertinent; and Fred could only look as forbidding as possible, and preserve a total silence, while Mr. Fling caught up the reins again, and was off and away without further ceremony.
“Isn’t he a funny man?” said Mary. “Funny” was not the word Fred would have used.
CHAPTER III.
THE SPELLING-SCHOOL.
The spelling-school had not yet begun, but Fanny Townsend and her brother Jack had already arrived, and so had Mr. Garland, and his nephew, Mr. Porter. Miss Pike expressed pleasure at seeing them all, and stood at the desk some time with her arm around Mary’s waist, chatting about “old times” at Laurel Grove, at Hilltop, and at Washington. Mary was feeling of late that there were many old times in her life, and that she had lived a long while. She had been quite a traveller, had seen and known a variety of people, but nobody—outside her own family—that is, no grown person,—was so dear to her as this excellent young lady, who was known among strangers as “the homely Miss Pike.” Mary had attended her school at Hilltop with Milly Allen, and afterward Miss Pike had been a governess in Dr. Gray’s family, and still later had spent a winter with the Grays at Washington. She had a decided fancy for Mary; and in return the little girl always called Miss Pike her “favorite friend.” It is only to be wished that every little girl had just such a “favorite friend.”
But it was now time for the exercises to begin. At a tap of the bell everybody was seated. The scholars were nearly all older than Mary, she and Fanny being perhaps the youngest ones there.
“This is an old-fashioned spelling-match,” explained Miss Pike to her visitors, “and we will now announce the names of the two ‘captains,’ Grace Mallon and James Hunnicut. They will take their places.”
Upon this James Hunnicut, a large, intelligent-looking boy of fifteen, walked to one side of the room and stood against the wall, and Grace Mallon, a sensible young girl of fourteen, walked to the other side of the room, and took her place exactly opposite James. They both looked very earnest and alive.
Grace had the first choice; next James; and so on for some minutes. There was breathless interest in it, for, as the best spellers would naturally be chosen first, the whole school sat waiting and hoping. The house was so still that one heard scarcely a sound except the names spoken by the two captains, and the brisk footsteps of the youths and maidens crossing the room, as they were called, now to Grace’s side, now to James’s, there to stand like two rows of soldiers on drill.