Peggy

Excerpt

A NEW WORLD.

"Miss Montfort!" said the Principal.

Peggy looked about her.

"I wonder if it's another cousin!" she said to herself. "It can't be, or Margaret would have known. Dear Margaret! now if she were only here, she could answer, and everybody would—"

"Miss Montfort!" said the Principal again, rather sharply.

"Isn't that your name?" whispered the girl who sat beside Peggy. "You'll have to answer, you know!"

Peggy started violently, and, looking up, met the Principal's eyes bent upon her. She struggled to her feet, feeling herself one blush from head to foot.

"I—I beg your pardon!" she faltered. "I didn't suppose—did you mean me?"

"You are Miss Montfort, are you not?"

"Oh, no! my cousins are both—that is,—I am just Peggy!"

There was a general titter, which the Principal checked with her pencil. "Young ladies!" she said in a warning tone. "Miss Montfort, you will have room No. 18, in the second corridor. You will be alone for the present."

"Oh, goody!" cried Peggy. "I mean—I'm ever so much obliged, thank you! Can I go now?"

"You may go now!" said the Principal, with a slight emphasis on the auxiliary.

Peggy stumbled over the foot of the girl next her, stepped on her own dress, tripped and came to her knees; picked herself up, with a sound of rending cloth, and finally got out of the room. This time the titter was not so easily checked. Peggy heard it rippling behind her as she fled. Even Miss Russell smiled as she rapped on the desk, and said one word to herself: "Untrained!"

But the girl who had sat beside Peggy rubbed her foot, which hurt a good deal, and said three words: "Poor little thing!"

No. 18 in the second corridor was a good-sized room, with two windows, one of them crossed on the outside by a fire-escape. Its present aspect was bare and unhomelike. The furniture consisted of an iron bedstead, a bureau and wash-stand, two chairs and a small table, all neat, but severely plain. The small square of carpet on the floor was a cold gray mixture with brown flowers on it. As Peggy Montfort looked about her, her heart sank. Was she to live here, to spend her days and nights here, for a whole endless year? She thought of her room at home, the great sunny room that she shared with her sister Jean. That had four windows, which were generally flung wide open; it was bare, because she and Jean liked to have plenty of space for gymnastics and wrestling; but that was a homelike, accustomed bareness, and they loved it. The great old four-post bed, with the round balls on which they loved to stand and perform circus tricks; the hammock slung across one end; the birds' nests and hawks' wings that adorned the walls in lieu of pictures; the antlers on which they hung their hats,—all these, or the thought of them, smote Peggy's stout heart, and sent it lower and lower down.

A maid knocked at the door: here was Miss Montfort's trunk, and would she unpack it, please, as the man would be coming again to take the empty trunks to the attic.

Peggy fell to work with ardour; here, at least, was something to do, in this strange, lonesome place....