Hollowmell | Page 2

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 that something very pressing had compelled Mabel to leave earlier than usual, and trusted her too completely to connect it in any way with herself.
After dinner they proceeded with their lessons, which seemed to be got over in a much shorter time when the