"I notice you are good friends enough, where any mischief is afoot!"

said Bertha, bluntly. She broke a corner off the pie, and added, "Goat, this is mince pie!"

"It is! it is!" said Miss Wolfe. "Ever discriminating, my own! And good?

Say it is good, Fluffy!"

"Yes, it is uncommonly good!" said Bertha. "Where did you get it? You've no business to have it, of course!"

"I got it out of a bandbox, sweet one!" replied Grace Wolfe. "It lives--they live, I should say, for there are three of them, thanks be to praise!--in a bandbox. A round one, or, to be more exact, oval in form, covered with wall-paper, whereon purple scrolls dispute the mastery with pink lozenges. It's the sweetest thing in bandboxes that I've seen since time was."

"Yes, but the pies!"

"The pies! as I was saying, three of them; ample, full moons of rapture!

"They came in beauty, side by side, They filled one home with glee.

Their bones are scattered--"

She paused with an expressive gesture.

"The best of it is,--you will admit that this is neat, Fluffy, even if your slavery to the virtues compels your disapproval,--the best of it is, the bandbox is the property of our Puggy."

"Miss Pugsley's bandbox! Oh, Grace!"

"Precisely! Our Puggy goes heavily without it, I am told. What would you? It was outside her door, while sweeping was going on; one is human, after all. She was out, with the best bonnet on her head. Poor head!

Poor bonnet! My hearty commiseration for both! When she returned, no bandbox! At present she harries the domestics; she hasn't thought of me yet, for a wonder. To-morrow, or the day after, I shall finish the pies--alas! Then I return the repository, and her bonnet acquires a fine, full, fruity flavour that annihilation alone can remove.

"You may break, you may shatter The tile if you will, But the scent of the brandy Will cling round it still."

"Grace! What a diabolical plot! and you have been lying awake, I suppose, chuckling over this!"

Miss Wolfe waved her hand in deprecation. "Not lying awake, sweet one!

Too slight a thing for that; still, it served to amuse. One must live, even you will admit that. What's this? Greek? Give it me!" She stretched out her hand for the book, but Bertha held it fast.

"No! no, Goat; I want it myself, and besides, you have no business here, you know you haven't."

"No; and you?" replied the other, coolly.

"I have permission; my lamp is out of order, and I asked Miss Russell if I might study in here," said Bertha. "But you will get into trouble if you stay, Grace, you know you will. Be good now, and go home!"

Grace Wolfe gazed pensively at her.

"You would check the interchange of souls?" she said. "I feel drawn to this Innocent, Fluff! I feel that she may have an influence over me for good. You would not part us? Could'st love a Goat, Innocent?" she added, turning to Peggy, and fixing her eyes on her with mournful intensity.

Peggy blushed, but before she could reply Bertha struck in decidedly.

"Grace, just one word! Peggy Montfort is a stranger, and I am not going to let her get into trouble if I can help it. And I don't want you to get into trouble, either!" she added, more gently. "You know, my dear--"

She stopped suddenly, for Grace Wolfe threw up her hand with a warning gesture; then, with a single swift movement, she rolled under the bed, and was out of sight.

"Study!" said Bertha, in a low whisper. "Study _hard_!"

Wholly bewildered, Peggy fixed her eyes on her book. She had heard no sound before, but now came a footfall in the corridor. A knock at the door, and Miss Russell opened it and looked in.

"Your lamp is in order now, Bertha," she said. "I thought I would tell you, as I was going by; but you can stay a little longer, if you like.

How charming you have made your room, Miss Montfort."

"Won't--won't you come in, Miss Russell?" stammered poor Peggy, conscious of Grace Wolfe's eyes under the bed, yet feeling that civility admitted of only one answer.

"Not now, thank you! Some day soon I shall come and make you a little visit, though, with pleasure. Good night, young ladies!"

She nodded kindly, closed the door, and pa.s.sed on.

The girls drew breath. A moment, and Grace Wolfe rolled out again, rose, and shook her neat dress.

"So much for Buckingham!" she said. "The good point about Principie is, she is respectable. Now, my Puggy would have looked through the keyhole first. But I foresee a visit to my own humble cot, to see whether I have learned my lessons.

"Oh! Farewell, friends!

Here Thisbe ends!"

She waved her hand, vaulted once more over the window, and was gone. An occasional faint, cat-like sound told of her progress up the fire-escape; then a window creaked slightly overhead, and all was silent.

Bertha Haughton ruffled up her curly black locks with a gesture of exasperation.

"And the worst of it is," she said, "that girl will know her Greek better than any one in cla.s.s. That's half the trouble; she learns so quickly, her lessons don't take half her time, and she puts the rest into mischief."

"She seems awfully clever!" said Peggy, timidly.

Bertha nodded. "She is just that, my dear; awfully clever! I'll tell you more about her to-morrow, but now we must study hard, for we've only twenty minutes left. Only, my dear, when you think of the Goat, remember three things: she is D. D. D.,--dear, delightful,--and dangerous!"

CHAPTER V.

TO THE RESCUE.

The next morning proved a hard one for Peggy; the rhetoric lesson was the first that must be recited. She had studied it hard, but somehow the rules seemed to make little impression. Whenever she tried to fix them in her mind, there came between her and the page two melancholy blue eyes, and she seemed to hear a voice of singular quality, a voice with a thrill in it, saying, "Could'st love a Goat, Innocent?"

So she was not as well prepared as she should have been when she went into the cla.s.s; and on meeting Miss Pugsley's cold greenish brown eye, what she did know seemed to evaporate from the top of her head, leaving a total blank. She stumbled and floundered; she did not know what an antecedent was, and she could not remember ever to have heard of a reciprocal p.r.o.noun.

"Pray, Miss Montfort, were you asleep or awake when you studied this lesson?" inquired Miss Pugsley, with acrid calm.

"I don't know!" replied Peggy, now thoroughly bewildered.

"Well, if you were asleep, let me recommend you to try it again when you wake up; or if you were awake, perhaps you might do it better in your sleep."

Peggy flushed scarlet, and the ready tears sprang into her eyes; but she forced them back, bit her lip, and tried not to feel the eyes of the whole cla.s.s bent on her in amused astonishment. Miss Pugsley seemed to take positive pleasure in her ignorance and embarra.s.sment. She put one question after another, each more ingeniously contrived than the last--or so it seemed--to show what Peggy did not know. At last, in self-defence, the poor child took refuge in one simple and invariable answer: "I don't know!" So confused was she that these words were the only ones she could utter, even when she knew the correct answer, or would have done so if she could have collected her wits. By the end of the hour, Peggy was entirely convinced that she was the dunce and b.u.t.t of the school; that she knew nothing, and never would know anything.