Hollowmell | Page 2

ran home without once
thinking of her disappointment in missing Mabel, but she did not forget
to seek her own room the first thing when she got in, and pour out her
thanksgiving for her recent triumph--even although she did find herself
stopping more than once in the midst of it to go over again in her own
mind the scene in the dressing-room afterward. After dinner she was
occupied with her lessons, and she found it just a little difficult to settle
down to them after the excitement of the afternoon.
She was a girl of a very warm and impulsive temperament, and little
things were apt to upset her in a way that many people would
characterize as absurd, but which was, so far from being absurd, simply
natural and unavoidable in an emotional nature such as hers. It was not,
therefore, through one cause and another, till she was in bed that she
recollected how she had wished to speak to Mabel so particularly, and

what it was she had to speak about. She felt just a little ashamed of
herself for allowing what had, only that morning, seemed to her a thing
of the first importance, to be crushed out, and for the moment
annihilated, by the occurrence of the afternoon. However, she decided
to make up for it on the morrow, and satisfied with this resolve, she fell
fast asleep.
Next morning, true to her resolution, she was early at the school so as
to be able to see Mabel Chartres, her most particular friend and
constant companion, before the day's work began. Mabel was a little
late, so Minnie could only whisper to her to wait when school was over,
and then they were called to their different places, for Minnie, though
younger by almost a year than Mabel, occupied an advanced position in
the first class, while Mabel was only in the second, and even there was
not of much account. Minnie, indeed in most things divided the laurels
of the school with Mona Cameron who was the oldest pupil, and the
emulation of the two kept the school in a perpetual state of
effervescence; Mona being sharp, and at times rather acrid, and Minnie
bright and sparkling and excitable, the contact of the two natures was
more than calculated to produce such a result. But on this particular day
it seemed as if some of the ingredients were wanting, for the morning
and afternoon passed, to the astonishment of all, without a single "phiz"
as the girls were wont somewhat felicitously to call the frequent
passages of arms in which the two girls considered it their peculiar
privilege to indulge.
Mona had slightly sneered at what she termed Minnie's latest "crank,"
on the preceding evening, but she had been a good deal impressed by
the courage and simplicity of Minnie's conduct, and in reality admired
it, while she felt she could never emulate it. She was honest with
herself whatever she might be with others, and felt in a vague sort of
way that she might be doing a thing almost as admirable, if not as
likely to excite admiration, if she could even only for one day keep her
sharp tongue under control, and refrain from such exercises of the vein
of sarcasm which was her peculiar characteristic, as at other times she
held it almost necessary to perform. Thus it was that the school was
particularly quiet that day, for Minnie was also in a subdued mood, and

so when school was over and she was at liberty to walk off with Mabel,
she felt just in the frame of mind for the discussion to which she had
been looking forward all day.
She felt, however, that she could not proceed with it at present, on the
way home where they would be liable to interruption at almost every
turn, so she persuaded Mabel to come home with her. This was no very
difficult matter, any more than it was an infrequent occurrence, for
Minnie and Mabel were never very long separate, and having had to
leave without her friend on the previous evening, had been as much a
disappointment to Mabel as it had been to Minnie.
It was a remarkable feature in the friendship which existed between
them, that it was, and always had been free from that species of quarrel
called "huffs." In the case of nine girls' friendships out of ten, the fact
of one going off in the way Mabel had done, without an explanation
afterwards or an intimation before hand, would have formed a very
strong foundation whereon to raise a structure of evidence to prove that
something was amiss, which few girls could have resisted. But no such
idea entered Minnie's head. She simply concluded