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Her love affairs were nothing to him so he tried to persuade himself. He was now busy in tying up the manuscript in a sheet of paper and Lavinia was thinking hard. The question was, what was to become of her? She had no home, for she had made up her mind she would not go back to her mother and Miss Pinwell was equally impossible.
Has the admirable Miss Pinwell granted you a holiday, or is it your birthday and you've come for a present, or what?" "Neither the one nor the other, sir. I I rather think I've left school." "Left school! And without apprising me who am, you know, in a way sponsor for you? But may be you've written the duchess?" Lavinia shook her head and cast down her eyes.
Oddly enough Lavinia, who was usually full of chatter, had to-night little to say. Her schoolmates rallied her on her silent tongue. "Oh, don't bother me, Priscilla," she exclaimed pettishly. "I suppose I can do as I like when Miss Pinwell isn't looking." "My dear, you generally do that when she is. I never saw such favouritism. I declare it's not fair. You were terribly tormenting all day.
What then do you think is my station?" "How can I tell? I take you to be a lady, madam. I don't want to know any more." At this Lavinia laughed outright. Her clothes were of good quality and of fashionable cut the Duchess of Queensberry's maid had seen to that her manner and air were those of a lady of quality thanks to Miss Pinwell but apart from these externals what was she?
"Well, you can do your screaming now if it pleases you, so long as it doesn't bring Miss Pinwell upstairs. Let me alone. I'm thinking about something." "Some one, my dear, you mean," put in a tall fair girl, Grace Armitage by name. "Confess now, isn't it the new curate at St. George's? He seemed to have no eyes for any one but you last Sunday evening. How cruel to disturb the poor man's thoughts."
But the lady had her suspicions nevertheless, and she marched with the erectness of a grenadier to where Lavinia Fenton sat with her eyes fixed upon her copy book, apparently absorbed in inscribing over and over again the moral maxim at the top of the page, and, it may be hoped, engrafting it on her mind. The young lady's industry did not deceive Miss Pinwell.
Other girls plucking up courage joined the champion and soon the school-room was in a hubbub. Probably the army of hoydenish maidens were not anxious the conflict should cease it was far more entertaining than maxims, arithmetic and working texts on samples and Miss Pinwell seeing this, summoned Bridget, the brawny housemaid, who with a canvas apron finally caught and squashed the rash intruder.
Miss Pinwell, the proprietress of the extremely genteel seminary for young ladies, Queen Square quite an aristocratic retreat some two hundred years ago was pacing the school-room. Her cold, sharp eyes roamed over the shapely heads black, golden, brown, auburn, flaxen of some thirty girls eager to detect any sign of levity and prompt to inflict summary punishment.
It was sometime before the excitement died down, and meanwhile Lavinia Fenton's remissness of conduct was forgotten indeed her intrepidity singled her out for praise, which she received with becoming graciousness. But before the day was out she relapsed into her bad ways. She could or would do nothing right. Miss Pinwell chided her for carelessness, she retorted saucily.
Your hand was not on your book. Where was it?" "Oh, that. Yes, a wasp was flying near us. I thought it was going to settle on Priscilla Coupland's neck and I brushed it away with my pen." Miss Pinwell could say nothing to this, especially as she distinctly heard at that moment the hum of some winged insect. It was a wasp, a real one, not the insect of Lavinia's fervid imagination.
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