Wild Kitty, L. T. Meade [namjoon book recommendations TXT] 📗

was she to be publicly disgraced?

"Oh, it is very wrong indeed to ask me to do it," she cried. Then the following words rushed out: "Miss Worrick, I am sorry I disobeyed you yesterday, and I'll stay in class to-day. Yes, I will stay; but I hate every one of you, and I hate England, and I wish I was back again in dear Old Ireland. Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear! Why was I ever sent into this horrid, cold, freezing land? Oh, my heart is broken! my heart is broken!"

Kitty's sobs were distinctly heard across the great schoolroom. She returned to her seat. Miss Worrick with a wave of her hand dismissed the rest of the girls. Kitty bent her head low down upon the desk before her, and sobbed louder and louder. At last she felt a hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

"I know I did it dreadfully, Miss Worrick," she said; "but it was so bad. Why did you make me, why did you make me?"

"There, Kitty, it is over now, and you will never disobey your teacher again as long as you live," said a kind voice, and Kitty raised her eyes to see, not the face of Miss Worrick, but that of the head-mistress.

"Oh, Miss Sherrard, how could you make me do it?" she sobbed. "It wasn't in me. None of the Malones could beg anybody's pardon, and I couldn't go on my knees when the moment came because they felt stiff, they had no joints in them. I could not do it properly; no, I could not."

"You did it, dear, but not very well. You did it, however, and you have learned your lesson. Now come with me into my private sitting-room. You and I will have lunch together, and I will excuse you from any more lessons to-day."

Kitty Malone never forgot that next hour. Miss Sherrard was an ideal head-mistress. She had the keenest sympathy with girls. In her long experience she had met girls of every shade of character, the bold, the ambitious, the timorous, the idle, the frivolous, the noble, the earnest. She knew all about the Christian girl as well as the pagan girl; all about the girl who had a terrible battle with her own evil pro pensities, and the girl whose nature was so amiable, so gentle, so sweet, that life would be comparatively easy for her. But although she had been head-mistress of the great Middleton School now for several years, she had never before met quite such an extraordinary specimen as Kitty Malone. Where, however, others would see nothing but a spirit of frivolity, a love of admiration, dress, pleasure, in Kitty, Miss Sherrard peeped below the surface and discovered some really noble qualities. She determined to be very gentle to this wild, willful girl—to take her, in short, as she was.

"Oh, I wonder you care to speak to me," said Kitty, when her sobs having ceased, she stood looking half-repentant, half-rebellious in Miss Sherrard's private room.

"You are not to be the subject of our conversation at all for the present, Kitty," said Miss Sherrard. "Lunch is ready, and you must be hungry. Would you like to go into my room—it is just next to this—and wash your hands and brush out your hair?"

Kitty looked at Miss Sherrard's small and beautifully-kept hands. She was fastidious to a remarkable degree about her personal appearance.

"I dare say my hair is somewhat untidy," she said. "I might as well take a squint at myself in the glass. I never like to look ugly. Is my nose very red, Miss Sherrard?"

"Never mind about your appearance," said Miss Sherrard, who could not help feeling slightly annoyed at what she considered such a very irrelevant remark.

"I expect I am a fright," said Kitty standing up and talking half to herself and half for the benefit of the head-mistress. "Crying always spoils me. Now, I knew a girl at home, and the more she cried the prettier she got. She used to let her tears roil down her cheeks in great drops, and never attempted to wipe them away, and her nose never got red, and her eyes only got bigger and quite dewy. Now, as to me when I cry, my nose——"

"Kitty, will you please remember that I am waiting for lunch," interrupted Miss Sherrard.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, ma'am," answered Kitty. She ran into the next room, examined herself critically in the glass, arranged her hair, dipped her hands into hot water, and came back looking spruce, bright, pretty, and once more restored to the highest good-humor.

"I said yesterday that I would love you, ma'am," she said, as she seated herself at the other side of the appetizing board. "Oh! what a dear little pie! I wonder is it pigeon pie"

"No, it is lamb pie," answered Miss Sherrard. "Will you help yourself?"

Kitty cut herself a generous slice.

"I like all sorts of good things," she said. "I am sure I was meant to do nothing in life but dress well, and look pretty, and have the nicest food to eat, and——"

"How dare you?" interrupted Miss Sherrard. Her words coming firm and strong, the expression on her kind face arrested the idle girl's silly remarks.

"What do you mean?" asked Kitty.

"I mean this, Miss Malone, that you are a girl with a considerable amount of ability——"

"Oh, now that I have not got."

"With a considerable amount of ability," continued Miss Sherrard, "and with a great many talents."

"Talents! I thought talents meant genius. Now, I have always and always been told that I was a dunce of the dunces. It's not joking me you are, is it, Miss Sherrard?"

"No, Kitty; I am in very sober earnest. You have been sent to me to make something of you."

"Well, my dear woman, I am afraid you won't make much. The fact is, I am wild through and through. I come of a wild stock. I wish you could see us at home, and Laurie, and——"

"You must tell me about your home afterward," said Miss Sherrard. "But now I have something to say about yourself."

As she spoke, Miss Sherrard drew her cup of coffee to the side of the table, leaned back, and looked fixedly into the bright and lovely face of the girl who sat opposite her.

"You have read your Bible, have you not?" she said.

"My Bible!" cried Kitty. "Yes; I read it every day."

"I am glad to hear that."

"Why, you don't suppose we are a lot of heathens at Castle Malone, do you, Miss Sherrard? Father has prayers every morning, and we all troop in, every one of us, into the big hall. Oh, I wish you could see the hall, and the pictures of my ancestors, and——"

"Afterward you shall tell me about them," interrupted Miss Sherrard. "So you do read your Bible every day. Then I dare say you happen to know the beautiful story, or rather parable, spoken by Christ himself about the talents?"

"Yes, I love that story; only I don't think it applies specially to me, for I have not got any."

"Have not you? Perhaps I can find that you have."

Kitty gazed at her mistress very earnestly.

"What is it I am good in?" she asked after a pause. "Is it my English?
Bless you, they tell me it's awfully Irish."

"It certainly is, Kitty."

"Then, I don't know any music, although I can sing and whistle. Oh, I can whistle anything. There's not an air that Laurie plays (it's he that has the genius for music, bless the boy)—but there's not an air he plays that I can't whistle it right up and down, and with variations too."

"Yes, my dear, yes; but I was not thinking of this special talent. Now, let me tell you something that you have got."

"What? Please speak."

"You have plenty of money."

"I never thought that was a talent," cried Kitty.

"I should think it a very great and responsible talent. You have been given that money to do something for God. He wants you to use it for Him. Then, also, you have a very bright, attractive, loving manner."

"Oh, I feel every word I say. It's not manner," said Kitty. "You don't suppose I'm a hypocrite, do you?"

"No, I think on the contrary you are very sincere. We will now admit that you have got two talents; you have got money and you have got a pleasant manner. I think also that you have got a third, and I may be able to prove to you that you have got a fourth."

"Dear me, this is most entertaining!" exclaimed Kitty. "So I have really got two talents, and you think I have more. What is the third?"

"I don't wish to make you vain; but you have—yes, I must tell you—a remarkably pretty face."

"Ah, now, what a darling you are! I always thought you were sweet. What part of me do you admire most, the eyes or the mouth? I have the real Irish eyes I know—gentian-blue, yes, that's the color—and my eyelashes—aren't they long?"

"We need not discuss your beauty piece by piece," said Miss Sherrard. "You are pretty, and I am willing to admit it. Now, a bright face like yours, with an attractive manner, is a gift. Then, besides, you have—you will be astonished when I say this—lots of becoming dress, which adds to the charm of your appearance. Kitty, if you were all you might be—if you would use that money which God has given you, that beauty which God has given you, that attractive manner which God has given you, all for His service—why, you could do a great deal in the world. You could make it a better place, a brighter place, a happier place. Now, my dear child, your father has trusted you to me. He wrote to me a great deal about you before you came to Middleton School——"

"Dear old dad!" cried Kitty.

"He loves you with all his heart."

"I should think so, the darling blessed man—may the saints preserve him!"

"As your father feels so strongly about you, and as I promised him to do what I could for his child, will you help me, Kitty? Will you remember that you are equipped for the battle of life much more bravely, much more strongly than most of the other girls in Middleton School? Use your beauty for Him, dear; use your attractive manner for Him."

"You make me feel very solemn," said Kitty. She rose. "I will try and think about it," she said. "I wish I was not quite such a giddypate; but I'll try and think about it."

Miss Sherrard kissed her.

"And now I want you to do something more," she said. "You won't be able to be a better girl than you were in the past if you don't pray to God to help you; and when you pray, Kitty, ask Him to teach you to restrain your feelings a little, not to let them all rush to the surface, to keep a little back. Thus you will gain strength of character, and—and be all the better for it, my child."

"You are very good to me," said Kitty. "I don't mind what I do for those I love. I suppose now you would wish me to learn my lessons perfectly every day?"

"I certainly should."

"And to—to turn poor little Agnes Moore from the head of her class?"

"Well, Kitty, I cannot say anything about that. II you do better work than Agnes Moore you will get to the head of the class and she will go down; but I doubt your being able to do so, for Agnes is a very clever and a very diligent little pupil. But I want you, dear, soon to get out of that class, for it is a great deal too young for you. I want you to be with girls of your own age. We are yet one month to the end of the term. By the end of term I want to be able to tell you that you have got a remove. And now, dear, good-by. Remember, I shall watch you, and—yes, I shall pray for you."

"You are very good to me," repeated Kitty; and she walked out of Miss
Sherrard's presence with her head lowered, and a mist before her eyes.

For the next few days Kitty was strangely thoughtful. She did not speak nearly so much as usual, she felt inclined to go