The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson Read Free Book Online Page B

over the verandah and down the corridor. At the end, the child pointed to a door, and on opening this Laura found herself in a very large brightly lighted room, where the boarders sat at two long tables with their books before them. Every head was raised at her entrance. In great embarrassment, she threaded her way to the more authoritative-looking of the governesses in charge, and proffered her request. It was not understood, and she had to repeat it.
    "I'm sure I don't know," said Miss Day in her turn: she had stiff, black, wavy hair, a vivid colour, and a big, thick nose which made her profile resemble that of a horse. "Can't you twiddle your thumbs for a bit?—Oh well, if you're so desperately anxious for an occupation, you'd better ask Miss Chapman."
    The girls in the immediate neighbourhood laughed noiselessly, in a bounden-duty kind of way, at their superior's pleasantry, and Laura, feeling as though she had been hit, crossed to the other table. Miss Chapman, the head governess, was neither so hard-looking nor so brilliant as Miss Day. She even eyed Laura somewhat uneasily, meanwhile toying with a long gold chain, after the manner of the Lady Superintendent.
    "Didn't Mrs. Gurley tell you what to do?" she queried. "I should think it likely she would. Oh well, if she didn't, I suppose you'd better bring your things downstairs. Yes . . . and ask Miss Zielinski to give you a shelf."
    Miss Zielinski—she was the governess in the dining-hall—said: "Oh, very well," in the rather whiny voice that seemed natural to her, and went on reading.
    "Please, I don't think I know my way," ventured Laura.
    "Follow your nose and you'll find it!" said Miss Zielinski without looking up, and was forthwith wrapt in her novel again.
    Once more Laura climbed the wide staircase: it was but dimly lighted, and the passages were in darkness. After a few false moves she found her room, saw that her box had been taken away, her books left lying [P.51] on a chair. But instead of picking them up, she threw herself on her bed and buried her face in the pillow. She did not dare to cry, for fear of making her eyes red, but she hugged the cool linen to her cheeks.
    "I hate them all," she said passionately, speaking aloud to herself. "Oh, HOW I hate them!"—and wild schemes of vengeance flashed through her young mind. She did not even halt at poison or the knife: a big cake, sent by Mother, of which she invited all alike to partake, and into which she inserted a fatal poison, so that the whole school died like rabbits; or a nightly stabbing, a creeping from bed to bed in the dark, her penknife open in her hand...
    But she had not lain thus for more than a very few minutes when steps came along the passage; and she had only just time to spring to her feet before one of the little girls appeared at the door.
    "You're to come down at once."
    "Don't you know you're not ALLOWED to stay upstairs?" asked Miss Zielinski crossly. "What were you doing?" And as Laura did not reply: "What was she doing, Jessie?"
    "I don't know," said the child. "She was just standing there." And all the little girls laughed, after the manner of their elders.
    Before Laura had finished arranging her belongings on the shelves that were assigned to her, some of the older girls began to drop in from the study. One unceremoniously turned over her books, which were lying on the table.
    "Let's see what the kid's got."
    Now Laura was proud of her collection: it really made a great show; for a daughter of Godmother's had once attended the College, and her equipment had been handed down to Laura.
    "Why, you don't mean to say a kid like you's in the Second Principia already?" said a big girl, and held up, incredulously, Smith's black and red boards. "Wherever did YOU learn Latin?"
    In the reediest of voices Laura was forced to confess that she had never learnt Latin at all.
    The girl eyed her in dubious amaze, then burst out laughing. "Oh, I say!" she called to a friend. "Here's a rum go.