“You belong to me,” said Miss Wigger, by way of encouragement, “and I have come to take you away.” At those dreadful words, terror shook little Syd from head to foot. She fell on her knees with a cry of misery that might have melted the heart of a savage. “Oh, mamma, mamma, don’t leave me behind! What have I done to deserve it? Oh, pray, pray, pray have some pity on me!”
Her mother was as selfish and as cruel a woman as ever lived. But even her hard heart felt faintly the influence of the most intimate and most sacred of all human relationships. Her florid cheeks turned pale. She hesitated.
Miss Wigger marked (through her own green medium) that moment of maternal indecision—and saw that it was time to assert her experience as an instructress of youth.
“Leave it to me,” she said to her sister. “You never did know, and you never will know, how to manage children.”
She advanced. The child threw herself shrieking on the floor. Miss Wigger’s long arms caught her up—held her—shook her. “Be quiet, you imp!” It was needless to tell her to be quiet. Syd’s little curly head sank on the schoolmistress’s shoulder. She was carried into exile without a word or a cry—she had fainted.
10.—The School.
Time’s march moves slowly, where weary lives languish in dull places.
Dating from one unkempt and unacknowledged birthday to another, Sydney Westerfield had attained the sixth year of her martyrdom at School. In that long interval no news of her mother, her brother, or her stepfather had reached England; she had received no letter, she had not even heard a report. Without friends, and without prospects, Roderick Westerfield’s daughter was, in the saddest sense of the word, alone in the world.
The hands of the ugly old clock in the school-room were approaching the time when the studies of the morning would come to an end. Wearily waiting for their release, the scholars saw an event happen which was a novelty in their domestic experience. The maid-of-all-work audaciously put her head in at the door, and interrupted Miss Wigger conducting the education of the first-class.
“If you please, miss, there’s a gentleman—”