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Pixie O'Shaughnessy

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<h3>Chapter Seven.</h3> <h4>Term-Holiday.</h4> Flora and Kate and Ethel were sitting with their classmates discussing the day’s work, and Pixie O’Shaughnessy had drawn her stool beside them, and was putting in a remark at every possible opportunity. It made her feel grown-up and important to join in the conferences of the older girls, and though in words they might say, “Run away, Pixie!” it generally happened that someone moved to the side of her chair to make an extra place, or that an arm stretched out to encircle the tiny waist. Even sixth-form girls like to be amused occasionally as if they were ordinary mortals, and Pixie was welcomed because she made them laugh and forget their trials and troubles, in the shape of Latin and Euclid and German idioms which refused to be unravelled. Two or three of the older pupils were going in for the Cambridge Examination at Christmas, and all were looking forward to the school exams at the end of the term, so that anxiety was heavy upon them. “My brain feels like jelly! It won’t work. I shall be getting softening of the brain at this rate!” sighed Flora, rubbing her cheeks up and down between her bands until she looked like a fat indiarubber doll. “I keep mixing things up until I don’t seem to have a clear idea left, and my mother has set her heart on my taking a good place. She will look sad if I come out bottom, and I do hate and detest people looking sad! I would far rather they scolded, and had done with it!” “My people don’t worry their heads about lessons. They sent me to school because they think it polishes a girl, and rubs off the angles, don’t you know!” said Lottie, with an air. She was the richest girl in the school, who took all the extras, and put her name down for every concert and entertainment, without thinking of the expense. Her parents had a house in town to which they came regularly every spring, during which season Lottie’s friends received many delightful invitations. She had unlimited pocket-money also, and was lavish in gifts to those who happened to be in her favour, a fact which a certain number of girls found it impossible to banish from their minds; and thus Lottie held a little court over which she reigned as queen, while the more earnest-minded of the pupils adored Margaret, and would hear no one compared to the sweet “school-mother.” Clara was a Margaret-worshipper, so she felt in duty bound to snub Lottie on this as on every possible occasion. “I don’t see much polish about you!” she retorted brutally. “And it’s ridiculous to come to school at all, if you don’t mean to work. If it’s only ‘pruins and prism’ you want, why didn’t you go to board with a dancing-mistress, and practise how to come in and out of a room, and bow to your friends, and cut your old schoolfellows when you meet them in the road? You’d find it useful, my dear!” The last sentence was a deliberate hit, for a former pupil had reported that, during a visit to a well-known watering-place, when she herself was returning unkempt and sandy from a cockling expedition, she had encountered Lottie walking on the parade with a number of fashionable visitors, and that, after one hasty glance in her direction, Miss Lottie had become so wonderfully interested in what was going on at the other side of the road that she altogether forgot to return her bow. Needless to say, Lottie had been reminded more than once of this incident, so that even Pixie, the newest comer, was familiar with its incidents, though she could not bring herself to believe in such deliberate snobbery. To-day, as Lottie flushed, and Margaret looked a pained reproach, it was Pixie who rushed to the rescue, wriggling about in her seat, and clasping and unclasping her hands in the earnestness of her defence. “Clara Montagu, you’ve no business accusing Lottie! You weren’t there, so you can’t tell! Perhaps the sun was in her eyes. You can’t see a man from a woman when it’s shining full in your face, though they may see you clear enough, and believe you’re shamming. Or perhaps the dust was blowing. I’ve been blind meself with dust before now, and come into the house looking as though I’d been crying for weeks. Why should she pretend not to know a friend—least of all when she’d been cockling? ’Deed, I’d have been more affectionate than ever, in the hope she’d say, ‘Help yourself, me dear! Lend me your handkerchief, and I’ll give ye a nice little bundle to take home for your tea!’” The Margaret-girls gave a simultaneous shriek of laughter at the idea of Miss Lottie carrying a handkerchief full of cockles, and even the Lottie-girls smiled approvingly at the little speaker, for was she not advocating the position of their chief? Flora nodded encouragingly across the hearth and cried, “Good for you, Pixie! Never listen to second-hand stories against your friends!” And Kate added meaningly, “Go on believing in human nature as long as you can, my dear. You’re young yet. When you are as old as I am it will be time to open your eyes. But to go back to the last subject but one, don’t you give way to nerves, girls, and begin worrying about the exams already. I’ve noticed that just about the middle of the term there always comes a ‘discouragement stage’ to anyone who is anxious to do well. The first energy with which one begins work has worn off, and as it is too soon for the final spurt, there comes a dull, flat time, when one worries and frets and gets down in the lowest depths of dumps. I spoke about it at home, and my father says every worker feels the same—artists when they are painting pictures, and authors when they are writing books. They have an idea, and set to work, all delight and excitement, believing that they are going to do the best thing they have ever done. For a little time all goes well, and then they begin to grow discouraged and worried, and think they might as well give it up at once, for it is going to be a dismal failure. They know something is wrong, but they can’t see what it is, and they mope about, and don’t know what to try next. Father told me a story about Millais, the man who painted ‘Bubbles,’ you know, and heaps of other beautiful things. He was so miserable about a picture once that he grew quite ill worrying about it. His wife tried to persuade him to leave it alone for a few days, and then take a rest; but no, he would not hear of it, so one fine day, when he was out, she just took the law into her own hands and had it carried down and hidden in the cellar. When he came home he went straight to the studio, and—my dears! I am glad I didn’t happen to be in the house, that’s all. I know what my father is like when he can’t find a clothes-brush, or someone has moved the matches out of the dressing-room. Millais raged about like a wild animal, but his wife was quite firm and determined, and wouldn’t tell him where it was for several days. He was obliged to go out and interest himself in other ways, and when he was quite well again she had the picture brought up, and he simply looked at it and laughed. He knew at once what was wrong, and how to put it right.” “I say,” cried Flora eagerly, “do tell that story to Miss Phipps! She might give us a week’s holiday and send us to see the sights of London! Do, Kate! Get it up in French and tell it to-night at tea. You don’t know how much good it might do!” “It’s a very good story, but I fail to see where the moral comes in. It hardly applies to us, I think,” said Clara, in her superior manner, and Kate breathlessly vindicated her position. “Yes, it does—of course it does. It shows that this anxious stage is a natural thing which all workers have to live through, and even if we can’t leave off lessons altogether, we can help ourselves by not giving way to nerves, but going steadily on, knowing that we shall feel all right again in a few days. Besides, there’s the Exeat coming,—that will make a nice break.” “I never worry about lessons, do I?” cried Pixie, pluming herself complacently. The part of Kate’s lecture which had dealt with over-anxiety about work had appealed with special force to one listener at least, and Pixie was delighted to find that she was free from failing in one direction at least. “I never did. Miss Minnitt—that’s the one who used to teach us—she said I never paid any attention at all. There was one day she was questioning me about grammar. ‘Pixie O’Shaughnessy,’ she says, ‘you’ve been over this one page until it’s worn transparent. For pity’s sake,’ she says, ‘be done with it, and get on to something fresh. Let me see if you can remember to-day what I taught you yesterday afternoon. How many kinds of verbs are there?’ ‘There are two,’ I said, and with that she was all smiles and noddings. ‘So there are, now. You’re quite right. And what will be their names?’ ‘Verb and adverb,’ says I, quite haughty; and the howl that went out of her you might have heard from Cork to Galway! That was all the grammar she’d managed to teach me!” “You don’t know very much more now, do you, chicken?” said Margaret, bending her head so that her cheek rested upon the rough, dark head. “Just bring your books to me any time you get puzzled, and I’ll try to make it clear. Talking of the term-holiday, girls, it is time we began to make our plans. How many of you are going out? Lottie, are you? Clara? Kate? Pixie? We had better find out first how many will be here.” Clara had had hopes that the maiden lady with the appetite would rise to the occasion, but, alas! she had betaken herself to stay with a relative, Pixie was sure that Jack could not spare time to have her for a whole day, and besides, she was going to have tea with him the Saturday before. All the girls seemed fated to spend the holiday at school save only the two sisters, Mabel and Violet, who were to be entertained by a kind aunt, and to choose their own entertainment for the afternoon, and Lottie, who was fortunate as usual. “I am doubly engaged for the evening!” she announced with a flourish. “I wrote home to my people about the holiday, and mother asked some friends to have me for part of the day. They live in a regular mansion—as big as two or three houses like this rolled into one, and they know all sorts of grand people! I am going to dinner, and it’s most exciting, for I don’t know whom I may meet!” “The Prince and Princess of Wales are at Sandringham! What a pity!” sighed Kate, the sarcastic. “It’s so awfully trying to come down to Lords and Ladies, don’t you know! You will hardly trouble to put on your best dress, I should think. The pea-green satin with the pink flounces will be good enough for them!” The Margaret-girls laughed hysterically at this exhibition of wit, but Lottie’s followers shot indignant glances across the room, and Pixie asked innocently—“Have you got a pea-green satin, Lottie? And pink flounces to it? You will be fine! I have a little pink fan out of a cracker last year, when there was company at the Chase. I’ll lend it to you if you like, and then you’ll be all complete!” “Thank you, Pixie O’Shaughnessy; you are a kind little girl. I shan’t want it this time, but I’ll be sure to remind you when I do,” replied Lottie, with unusual warmth of manner, for the child’s sincerity had touched a soft spot in her vain heart, and she had an increasing desire to include her in the number of her admirers. Later on, when they were left alone together at the end of the schoolroom, she put her arm round the tiny waist, and said caressingly— “Talking of party dresses, what are you going to wear yourself on Tuesday evening? You have to put on your best things, you know, just as if you were going out?” “Will I?” Pixie looked surprised, but absolutely unperturbed. “But I haven’t a rag to my back but the black you see every night! Bridgie said, ‘It’s not likely you’ll be visiting at Court until ye’re education’s finished, so this old grenadine will see you through until the ship comes home from its next voyage. It’s gone a long way this time,’ says she, ‘and between you and me, I expect the storms will swamp it, but I’ve taken the best pieces out of my old dress and Esmeralda’s, and, barring the darn on the back seam, I defy ye to tell it from new!’ So that’s all I’ve got, as I told you before, and, party or no party, it will have to do.” Lottie looked at her in horrified sympathy, but not a sigh of regret clouded the beaming face; the head was tilting to and fro in its usual complacent fashion, the shabby little flounce of a skirt was whisking to and fro. Such a depth of poverty seemed incomprehensible to the child of wealthy parents, and she was moved to an unusual desire to help. Never before had she been known to lend one of her possessions to another girl, but now she said quite eagerly— “I have a lace collar, Pixie—a very pretty collar—I’ll lend it to you, and a white ribbon for your hair! It would lighten your dress wonderfully; and there is a brooch too, and a little gold bangle.” She paused, looking inquiringly to see the result of her offer, for one could never tell how it would be received. Some girls might be pleased, others might consider it almost an insult, and she would be sorry to offend the funny little thing. But Pixie was not offended. She had too much of the O’Shaughnessy blood in her veins to object to have things made easy for her at the expense of another, and she felt no embarrassment in taking the good things that came in her way. “Oh, ye darlin’!” she cried rapturously. “Will ye lend them to me, really? Think of me now with a bracelet on me arm, and a brooch at me neck! They wouldn’t be knowing me at home. I wish to-day was Tuesday; and what shall we do with ourselves all the hours before it’s time to dress up?” Lottie referred the question to Margaret, who, as head girl, had been busy thinking out plans for the enjoyment of her friends. “I thought of asking if we might go to see the Cinematograph at the Polytechnic,” she replied. “Miss Phipps promised to take us some day, and if we could do some shopping first, and have tea afterwards, it would be a delightful way of spending the afternoon. There is one thing that we must buy while we have the chance, and that’s a present for Fraulein. Her birthday is next week, and she is such a kind old dear that she deserves something nice. I want at least a shilling from everyone, and as much more as they can afford. I wonder what we had better get?” “I know what she would love! A scent-bottle for her dressing-table like the one Mademoiselle has. We could not afford one quite so good, but we could get a very nice size for about two pounds. One day when I was in Mademoiselle’s room, Fraulein came in and took up the bottle, and began admiring it, and saying how nice it was to get presents which were good to look at, as well as to use. She has not many pretty things—poor Fraulein!—and I think she would really enjoy a taste of luxury. Mademoiselle has her initials engraven on the glass, but that would be too expensive for us. We can have them on the stopper instead.” “And who gave Mademoiselle her bottle? Was it someone here?” asked Pixie curiously, whereupon Kate tossed her head with an air of exaggerated dismay. “My dear, how can you? Don’t say that to Mademoiselle, I implore you! She would have a fit. We are all commoners, and English commoners at that, and the lady who gave her that precious bottle was Madame la Marquise de Something or Other, the mother of her beloved pupil Isoult Andrée Adèle Marie Thérèse—the most perfect, and beautiful, and clever, and amiable jeune fille that was ever created!” Kate paused, hitched one shoulder to her ear, spread out her hands, and elevated her eyebrows in ridiculous mimicry of Mademoiselle’s mannerisms. “Did she evare neglect her work? Jamais, nevare! Did she evare forget that she was a jeune fille, and be’ave like a vild, rough boy? Jamais, jamais! Was she evare like these Engleesh—rude, impairtinent, disobedient? Mais non! Always the same—cette ange, the most wise, the most amiable! And when she has finished her education and made her débût, to be the most beautiful and admired wherever she has gone, she has vept—vept, I tell you, to say adieu to her beloved Mademoiselle! And she has given her a chain for her neck, and Madame la Marquise that beautiful ’ansome botelle. Really, Pixie, you are behind the times if you don’t know about Isoult. Just turn Mademoiselle on to her next time you are with her on the walk, and you won’t have to exert yourself any more. She will sing her praises until you come in.” “I will,” said Pixie sturdily. “And I’ll see that bottle, too. I must see that bottle. I’ll go into Mademoiselle’s room next time I have a chance, and have a good look at it all to myself!” The girls smiled, but took little note of a determination which seemed natural enough under the circumstances. A week afterwards they remembered it with very different feelings, and Pixie’s own words were brought up in judgment against her. <hr> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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