CHAPTER VIII.

PRUDY PARLIN.

Isa Harrington's surprise was great when she saw all her artful plans overthrown, and Grace and Cassy the same "cup and saucer" as ever.

"O, Gracie," said she, "you don't love Isa any more, now Cassy has come home."

Grace drew coldly away. "You tried to turn me against my best friend, Isa."

"O, Gracie, I never! I only told what I heard, and Lucy Lane was the one that said it. You may ask her."

Lucy was as harmless a fly as ever got caught in a spider's web. Isa thought she could manage her finely. So the moment she had done talking with Grace, she made Lucy tease Miss Allen to let them both go into the recitation-room to study their lessons.

"We'll promise, solemnly, we won't say a word only grammar," said Isa, earnestly. "Can't you trust us?"

The teacher hesitated, looked at timid little Lucy, and said, "Yes. But if you break your word, girls, remember, 'tis the last time you'll ever go in there to study."

Isa had no intention of keeping her word. She wanted to have Lucy to herself for the purpose of "managing" her.

For a while the girls studied in silence, their heads close together, and covered by a shawl.

"O, Lucy," said Isa, suddenly, "I've a compliment for you."

Lucy put her finger on her lip.

"Dear me, Lucy, didn't I speak good grammar? That's all the promise _I_ made--that I wouldn't say anything but _grammar_, and I won't, unless I make a mistake. A certain person said you had lovely hair. Got a compliment for me?"

"Why, yes," said Lucy, innocently; "I heard a lady say you might be a right good little girl perhaps, but you're rather homely."

Isa bit her lip.

"It was Cassy Hallock that told yours, Lucy. By the way, did you ever hear her say Gracie's hair is fire-red?"

"Why, Isa, no, indeed!"

"Didn't? Why, that's nothing to the way she's slandered her; and Grace her best friend, too."

Lucy was horrified.

"Do you remember when you, and I, and Cassy staid, ever so long ago, to scrub our desks? Well, don't you know how Cassy spoke of Mrs. Clifford's oyster party?"

"Yes, I do. She said Grace appeared like a lady."

"There, Lucy Lane, is that the way you hear? Didn't understand it, did you, any more than a baby? She was hinting that Grace talked like old folks--very pert and bold."

"O, was she?"

"Of course she was, Lucy. Can't you see through a mill-stone, child? I wouldn't want any one to hint about me the way Cassy does about Grace."

"Nor I wouldn't, either," echoed Lucy.

"Didn't you think, Lucy, by what Cassy said, that her ma wanted to break up the friendship? You told me at the time that you thought so, now certainly."

"O, what a story!" Lucy spoke very loud in her surprise.

"Very well," said Isa, adjusting the shawl, "you've forgotten, perhaps. Your memory is about as long as my little finger, Lucy. But no matter; I know what Cassy meant if you didn't. Reckon I've got eyes in my head."

"Well, I knew what she meant, too, I suppose, at the time of it," said soft-voiced Lucy, anxious to prove that she had eyes in her head, and could see through a mill-stone. Foolish fly! When a cunning spider said, "Will you walk into my parlor?" Lucy always walked right in.

"I hate Cassy Hallock," cried Isa, unconsciously raising her voice very high: "I just hate her. She's no business to make believe friends with Gracie. Let's you and I put a stop to it."

"Hush, Isa; don't speak so loud."

"I didn't mean to. Peek out, Lucy, and see if the door is shut."

Lucy pushed the shawl to one side and peeped out. Terror-stricken, she drew back again, glad to hide her head. The door was wide open, and the school so still you might have heard a pin drop! Not a word had been lost. There stood Miss Allen by the desk, her finger up to hush the faintest noise. Having opened the door and found the girls talking, she decided to let the whole school know it.

Isa was in an agony of unavailing remorse. Not only had she lost her teacher's respect, but she had forever ruined her cause with Grace. She longed for the earth to open and hide her shame; but as the earth refused to take her in, the best she could do was, to steal home, her proud head bent low and concealed under her sun-bonnet. It was a bitter punishment; but Miss Allen, who had long understood her crooked conduct, was sure she deserved it.

She was discharged from the R. S. S. Angry and mortified, and not knowing of any better way to annoy the girls, she told their secrets to the wide world. Grace had never dreamed of this.

"What are we to do with that little black cow?" said Robert to Grace. "She always wants to be somewhere else. She's a regular tornado at tearing down fences. What say to her joining a secret society?"

Grace was helping train a prairie-rose.

"Don't know what you mean, Robin."

"Just what I say. These strong-minded cows ought to form a Mutual-Improvement, Cows' Rights Society. I've thought of a good name," added Robert, with a twinkle in his eye: "Princesses of the Crooked Horn."

"Now, Robin, what do you mean? Tell, this minute," cried Grace, dropping her ball of twine, and blushing.

The boy whistled.

"Tell me, Robin, have you heard something?"

"I've heard something, yes."

"What have you heard?"

"Shan't tell. Reckon _you've_ heard of the Ruby Seal!"

"That'll do, Robin," said Grace, suddenly looking down to watch an ant with threadlike limbs dragging off a cold shoulder of fly.

"See here, Gracie: what cute hands girls are to keep secrets!"

"Don't want to hear another word, Robin."

"Cassy," said Grace, a little later, "what'll we do about the R. S. S.? Isa's been and spread it all over town!"

"You don't believe it, do you? Why that makes me think what Johnny said to-day. He's sorry I'm such a broken-hearted old maid at this time of life. Now I know what he meant."

"But what'll we do about our R. S. S.? I'm so mortified!"

"Let it die: who cares?"

"O, Cassy, I care. Don't let's give up at trifles."

"Then turn it into a Soldiers' Aid." Grace clapped her hands and waltzed across the street.

"So we will, Cassy; so we truly will! That's so very respectable!"

"We'll marry, too, if they're going to make such a fuss," suggested Cassy.

"I won't--unless I please. I'll never be married to keep people from laughing, Cassy Hallock."

Here Grace set her little foot firmly upon a toad, which she mistook for solid ground.

"Cassy," continued she, after a little scream, "let's work for those darling old soldiers in the hospital. What have we been thinking about? Don't you let on! After a little, you know, when school stops, Cassy! O, can we wait that long?"

Meanwhile, we must attend to a new arrival. Uncle Edward Parlin dropped in suddenly, as good and smiling as ever, and with him little Prudy, blushing like a rose, but so dusty that she almost made you sneeze. But where was Susy? It seemed that Mrs. Parlin had not had time to prepare both the children for such a hasty journey.

Horace shouted like a young Indian. Grace clapped her hands, and laughed in every note of the scale up to the second octave and back again.

Prudy threw her arms about Mrs. Clifford's neck.

"O, aunt Ria," she whispered, "bimeby I shall cry."

"Aren't you well, darling?"

"Yes'm; but I feel as if I wasn't _going_ to feel well."

It had been a hard journey for the poor little thing. She was soon nicely bathed and put in a comfortable bed, where, for about at minute, she lay wondering at the mosquito-bar, and then forgot all her trials in sleep. Next morning, Horace asked what she had dreamed.

"O," said Prudy, much refreshed, "I slept so fast I never heard my dreams. There, aunt Ria, you know Mrs. Mason, that gave Susy the bird? She's dead: I thought you'd be glad to hear that!"

"I didn't know the lady," said Mrs. Clifford, smiling; "yet I am not glad she is dead."

Prudy was constantly espying wonders. Her fear of pigs was extreme, and the whole Ohio valley seemed to her one vast pig-pen without any fence. The creatures had such long noses, too! From a safe distance, Prudy liked to watch them cracking nuts. She thought they could not have picked out the meats better if they had been gifted with fingers.

She wandered with Grace and Cassy about the beautiful garden and green-house in a maze of delight. She might have been too happy if the mosquitos had not laid plans to devour her. Grace bathed the poor child in camphor. "It hurts," said Prudy, the quiet bears rolling down her cheeks; "but Gracie bathes me for my good, and I won't cry. O, aunt Ria, when I'm naughty, and you want to punish me, you can just put me to bed, and let the skeeters bite me."

Owing to the savage conduct of these bloodthirsty creatures, there was no trace left of Prudy's beauty, except what Horace called her "killing little curls." Grace was disappointed, for she had hoped to exhibit her charming cousin to great advantage.

However, the mosquito-hills disappeared from her face in time, and then Prudy was quite "a lioness," as Horace said. The princesses admitted her to their social meetings. All they did now was, to state that they had read the required amount of Scripture, had told no wrong stories, and used no language which they regarded as unladylike. For the present, they met and played games, intending during holidays to begin work for the soldiers in earnest.

When Prudy visited the school, she sat with every one of the Princesses in turn, and liked them all but the discarded member of the society, Isa Harrington.

In private, she told Grace that Isa looked "like the woman that killed the man," meaning Lady Macbeth, whose face she had often seen in a picture.

"Don't you like me, darling?" said Isa, offering her a handful of peppermints.

"O, yes, I like you," said the child, accepting the sugar-plums, "but I don't like the _spirit_ of you."

"What does that mean, you funny thing?"

"I don't know, but that's the way they talk."

Prudy loved Mahla Linck at once. She said she had had just such a lameness her own self, and knew how it felt. "Ah, little dear," said Mahla, laying her wasted cheek close to Prudy's, "but you can walk now without a crutch, and I never can."

"O, Mahla, yes, you can _never_; you can when you grow an angel."

The Princesses liked to escort Prudy through the streets, and hear her exclamations of surprise. She told them the "Yankees wouldn't 'buze their horses so;" for it seemed to her rather unkind to braid their tails like heads of hair, and tie them up in knots; though Grace assured her this was done to keep them from trailing in the dust. The mules were another curiosity. Prudy was also amazed at the "loads of oxen" driven by men who sat in the carts, and "drove 'em and whipped 'em same as if they was horses." "Yankees," she said, "walked with the oxen, and talked into their ears."

She informed the girls that the Hoosier sky was very odd-looking. "It's Quaker color," she said; "but the sky to Portland is as blue as a robin's egg, 'cept when it fogs."

She described feathery snow-storms, "frost-bitten" windows, and the nice fishing in "Quoddy Bay;" told her listeners that eastern people "_shave_" their grass in summer, and when it is dry it's good to jump on.

For the short time Prudy staid in Indiana her sunny face was a pleasure to everybody.

"Why, aunt Ria," said she, "do you think I'm good, though? Well, I'm ever'n ever so much better away from home."