Miss Prudence | Page 2

not been ignorant of
what the penalty would be. Mr. Holmes had announced it at the
opening of school: "Each word in spelling that is missed, must be
written one hundred times, and every example not brought in on the
slate must be put on the blackboard after school."
She had smiled in self-confidence. Who ever knew Marjorie West to
miss in spelling? And had not her father looked over her examples last
night and pronounced them correct? But on her way to school the paper
on which the examples were solved had dropped out of her Geography,
and she had been wholly absorbed in the "Lucy" book during the time
that she had expected to study the test words in spelling. And the
overwhelming result was doing three examples on the board, after
school, and writing seven hundred words. Oh, how her back ached and
how her wrist hurt her and how her strained eyes smarted! Would she
ever again forget amateur, abyss, accelerate, bagatelle, bronchitis,
boudoir and isosceles?
Rie Blauvelt had written three words one hundred times, laughed at her,
and gone home; Josie Grey had written isosceles one hundred times,
and then taken up a slate to help Marjorie; before Marjorie was aware

Josie had written abyss seventy-five times, then suspecting something
by the demureness of Josie's eyes she had snatched her slate and erased
the pretty writing.
"You're real mean," pouted Josie; "he said he would take our word for
it, and you could have answered some way and got out of it."
Marjorie's reply was two flashing eyes.
"You needn't take my head off," laughed Josie; "now I'll go home and
leave you, and you may stay all night for all I care."
"I will, before I will deceive anybody," resented Marjorie stoutly.
Without another word Josie donned sack and hood and went out,
leaving the door ajar and the cold air to play about Marjorie's feet.
But five o'clock came and the work was done!
More than one or two tears fell slowly on the neat writing on Marjorie's
slate; the schoolroom was cold and she was shivering and hungry. It
would have been such a treat to read the last chapter in the "Lucy" book;
she might have curled her feet underneath her and drawn her shawl
closer; but it was so late, and what would they think at home? She was
ashamed to go home. Her father would look at her from under his
eyebrows, and her mother would exclaim, "Why, Marjorie!" She would
rather that her father would look at her from under his eyebrows, than
that her mother would say, "Why, Marjorie!" Her mother never scolded,
and sometimes she almost wished she would. It would be a relief if
somebody would scold her tonight; she would stick a pin into herself if
it would do any good.
Her photograph would not be in the group next time. She looked across
at the framed photograph on the wall; six girls in the group and herself
the youngest--the reward for perfect recitations and perfect deportment
for one year. Her father was so proud of it that he had ordered a copied
picture for himself, and, with a black walnut frame, it was hanging in
the sitting-room at home. The resentment against herself was tugging

away at her heart and drawing miserable lines on her brow and lips--on
her sweet brow and happy lips.
It was a bare, ugly country schoolroom, anyway, with the stained floor,
the windows with two broken panes, and the unpainted desks with
innumerable scars made by the boys' jack-knives, and Mr. Holmes was
unreasonable, anyway, to give her such a hard punishment, and she
didn't care if she had been kept in, anyway!
In that "anyway" she found vent for all her crossness. Sometimes she
said, "I don't care," but when she said, "I don't care, anyway!" then
everybody knew that Marjorie West was dreadful.
"I'm through," she thought triumphantly, "and I didn't cheat, and I
wasn't mean, and nobody has helped me."
Yes, somebody had helped her. She was sorry that she forgot to think
that God had helped her. Perhaps people always did get through! If they
didn't help themselves along by doing wrong and--God helped them.
The sunshine rippled over her face again and she counted the words on
her slate for the second time to assure herself that there could be no
possible mistake. Slowly she counted seven hundred, then with a
sudden impulse seized her pencil and wrote each of the seven words
five times more to be "sure they were all right."
Josie Grey called her "horridly conscientious," and even Rie Blauvelt
wished that she would not think it wicked to "tell" in the class, and to
whisper about something else when they had