“It’s nothing to you whether I did or not,” instantly replied Abby, her face white with passion, and her frame trembling with excitement.
“Well, you needn’t be so touchy about it,” replied the other girl. “I only asked, because I thought it would be doing you a favor to tell you your father had failed, if you didn’t know it.”
“I wish folks would mind their own business, and let me alone,” said Abby in the same angry tone, and she turned away from the group, who had listened to this conversation.
“I declare, she has a queer way of expressing her sorrow,” said the other girl, before Abby had got out of hearing.
Abby heard of her father’s failure, almost as soon as she reached her boarding-place, after school, the previous day. The intelligence fell upon her like a thunderbolt. She retired to her room, and cried for several hours, and finally, nature becoming exhausted, she sobbed herself to sleep. The next morning, the question arose in her mind, whether she should stay at home, and thus avoid meeting her school-mates, whose taunts she was perhaps conscious she had reason to expect; or whether she should go boldly and mingle with them, exhibiting before them a total unconcern in regard to the failure. She finally adopted the latter course, and we have seen how far she succeeded. There were some among her associates who longed to whisper a word of sympathy or encouragement in her ear; but the bravado air she assumed forbade, and the poor girl found she had doomed herself to hug the crushing burden secretly to her heart, without a loving word of pity from any of her young associates.
The academy was dismissed in the afternoon, and Abby was hurrying away from her school-mates, when an arm was softly laid upon her shoulder, and, turning, she found Jessie by her side. In the kindest and most delicate way, Jessie alluded to the misfortune that had overtaken Abby, and expressed her sympathy for her. And then she went on to tell her how this very loss might prove, in the end, a great blessing to her family, and especially to herself. It might lead her to depend upon herself, instead of others; to think less of fashion, and show, and position, and wealth, and more of a well-cultivated mind, an amiable spirit, and a useful life. It might, in fact, be the making of her, if, instead of sitting down and repining, she would now begin to live for some good purpose. And then Jessie argued that the misfortune was not half so bad as it might have been. Mr. Leonard was not an embezzler, like his partner, but had honorably surrendered his property. The loss of money, she said, was nothing compared with the loss of integrity and character.
Abby at first received Jessie’s condolence rather cavalierly. She said her family always had lived in style, and she did not believe they would come down now. Her father was a great merchant, she said, and if he had lost some of his money, he knew how to make plenty more. In fact, she didn’t consider it any great thing if he had failed. But this assumed indifference to her trouble soon melted away under the kind and sympathizing words of Jessie, and Abby at length fully opened her heart, and found some degree of relief in pouring out her griefs in the ear of her friend.
CHAPTER XVI.
GETTING UP IN THE WORLD.
The academy term was now about to close, and the students were quite earnestly engaged in reviewing studies, preparatory to the approaching examination. Nothing else was talked much about, even by the boys. Ronald came marching into the house one afternoon, fresh from school, repeating the words:
“Step by step—step by step—step by step;” adding, “that’s our countersign, mother—the scholar’s countersign; Mr. Upton gave it to us to-day.”