Madame Flirt | Page 9

somehow her peccadilloes were always forgiven. She had a smile against which severity--even Miss Pinwell's--was powerless.
"What were you doing just now when you were not writing?"
The head was slowly raised. The wealth of wavy brown hair fell back from the broad smooth brow. The large limpid imploring eyes looked straight, without a trace of guilt in them, at the thin-faced schoolmistress. The beautiful mouth, the upper lip of which with its corners slightly upturned was delightfully suggestive of a smile, quivered slightly but not with fear, rather with suppressed amusement.
"Nothing madam," was the demure reply.
"Nothing? I don't believe you. Your hand was not on your book. Where was it?"
"Oh, that. Yes, a wasp was flying near us. I thought it was going to settle on Priscilla Coupland's neck and I brushed it away with my pen."
Miss Pinwell could say nothing to this, especially as she distinctly heard at that moment the hum of some winged insect. It was a wasp, a real one, not the insect of Lavinia's fervid imagination. The windows were open and it had found its way in from Lamb's Conduit Fields, at a happy moment allying itself with Lavinia.
Others heard it as well and sprang to their feet shrieking. The chance of escaping from tiresome moral maxims was too good to be lost.
"Young ladies----" commanded Miss Pinwell, but she could get no further. Her voice was lost in the din. The lady no more loved wasps than did her pupils. She retreated as the wasp advanced. The intruder ranged itself on the side of the girls and circled towards their instructress with malevolence in every turn and vicious intent in its buzz.
The only one not afraid was Lavinia Fenton who, waving a pocket handkerchief met the foe bravely but without success. The enemy refused to turn tail. Other girls plucking up courage joined the champion and soon the school-room was in a hubbub. Probably the army of hoydenish maidens were not anxious the conflict should cease--it was far more entertaining than maxims, arithmetic and working texts on samples--and Miss Pinwell seeing this, summoned Bridget, the brawny housemaid, who with a canvas apron finally caught and squashed the rash intruder.
It was sometime before the excitement died down, and meanwhile Lavinia Fenton's remissness of conduct was forgotten--indeed her intrepidity singled her out for praise, which she received with becoming graciousness.
But before the day was out she relapsed into her bad ways. She could or would do nothing right. Miss Pinwell chided her for carelessness, she retorted saucily. As discipline had to be maintained she was at last condemned to an hour with the backboard and there she sat in a corner of the room on a high legged chair with a small and extremely uncomfortable oval seat made still more uncomfortable by it sloping slightly forward. As for the back, it was high and narrow. It afforded no rest for the spine. The delinquent was compelled to sit perfectly upright. Thus it was at the same time an instrument of correction and of deportment.
Whatever bodily defects the early Georgian damsels possessed they certainly had straight backs and level shoulders. The backboard was admirable training for the carriage of the stately sacque, the graceful flirting of the fan and for the dancing of the grave and dignified minuet.
The day was nearing its end. The hour for retiring was early, and at dusk the head of each bedroom took her candle from the hall table and after a low curtsy to the mistress of the establishment preceded those who slept in the same room up the broad staircase. The maidens' behaviour was highly decorous until they were safe in their respective bed-chambers, when their tongues were unloosed.
Oddly enough Lavinia, who was usually full of chatter, had to-night little to say. Her schoolmates rallied her on her silent tongue.
"Oh, don't bother me, Priscilla," she exclaimed pettishly. "I suppose I can do as I like when Miss Pinwell isn't looking."
"My dear, you generally do that when she is. I never saw such favouritism. I declare it's not fair. You were terribly tormenting all day. Anybody but you would have been sent to bed and kept on bread and water. What's the matter with you, miss?"
"Nothing. I'm tired, that's all."
"First time in your life then. You were lively enough this afternoon when you nearly got me into a scrape trying to make me laugh with your tickling. It was as much as I could do to keep from screaming," exclaimed Priscilla angrily.
"Well, you can do your screaming now if it pleases you, so long as it doesn't bring Miss Pinwell upstairs. Let me alone. I'm thinking about something."
"Some one, my dear, you mean," put in a tall fair girl, Grace Armitage by name. "Confess now, isn't it the new curate at St. George's?