Boarding school students -- Juvenile fiction; Boarding schools -- Juvenile fiction; Teenage girls -- Fiction
If the truth were told, some of the girls hoped to embarrass their
victim in some way and get even for the times when she had so seriously
embarrassed them in class. Isabel did not know this, though if she had
it would probably have made no difference; for Isabel was not given to
thinking about consequences!
“Please do it, Cathalina?” Isabel looked very pretty, pushing back her
short, curly locks as she wheedled Cathalina.
“O, all right,—depends upon what you want me to say. I won’t tell any
‘whoppers.’ See me tonight before study hours.”
Isabel went off jubilant. “She’ll do it, girls, but we’ll have to fix it
up all right, because Cathalina isn’t the kind of a girl that will write
just anything.”
“Make it short and snappy,” said Diane, “like this: ‘Dear Fraulein
Carver—May I see you in the library a few minutes before class? Yours,
E. F. S.’—or something like that,—however Cathalina wants it.”
As this seemed harmless enough, and none of the girls seemed to realize
the fact of deception, Cathalina wrote the message in German script and
Ellen F. Smith signed her initials, going into the library to “keep the
date with our ‘beloved teacher.’” Lilian who was in the Virgil class,
succeeded in placing the note on the desk while Dr. Carver stood near
the door conferring with one of the other girls. Then Lilian slipped
back into the hall to notify the girl who stood in a retired corner with
a cunning gray kitten, its throat tied with a pretty blue ribbon, from
which dangled a card. The girls had spent some time thinking over what
to put on the card, the most spiteful suggestion being “TO A CAT”. “Be
Good To Me; I’m Young,” was Eloise’s idea, but they finally decided to
say, “If you don’t like girls, maybe you like kittens,” and one of the
girls had spoiled a dozen cards or more in writing it artistically.
Cathalina had been worried over the kitten part of the performance and
made the girls solemnly promise that they would prop open a crack in the
cover of the old-fashioned desk.
“Don’t worry, Cathalina, we aren’t cruel,” said Diane, pretending to be
offended.
“O, I know that, Diane!”
The class, as usual, was gathering in the back part of the room, near
the windows, in little groups, some listening while a good student read
the hard passages to them. There was then, no difficulty in placing the
kitten without notice. And when, after a little, a scratching and mewing
began, the last bell rang, and Dr. Carver came in radiant. She located
the cat instantly, while the girls were taking their regular places,
held it up with a sarcastic smile in full view of the class, an
unsmiling company, carried the meek animal to the door, dropped it in
the hall and shut the door with more of a bang, doubtless, than she had
intended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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