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The Chaplain's wife bowed her head, and said nothing. Lispeth was silent, too for a little time; then she went out down the valley, and returned in the dress of a Hill girl infamously dirty, but without the nose and ear rings. She had her hair braided into the long pig-tail, helped out with black thread, that Hill women wear. "I am going back to my own people," said she. "You have killed Lispeth.
I hope whoever has the reins will keep up what we have worked so hard for this year." Lispeth was looking straight at Ingred as she spoke; her meaning was unmistakable. Ingred blushed a faint rosy pink. It had only just dawned upon her that next term would possibly bring her the greatest honor that the College had to confer.
"I believe," said Lispeth to her special confidante Althea, "that perhaps we were making rather a mistake. You can't have any influence with those kids unless you keep well in touch with them. I was so busy, I just let them slide before, and I suppose that was partly why they got out of hand, though the little monkeys had no business to get up that impudent strike!
Lispeth, who did not relax the activities of The Rainbow League, revived her idea of a Posy Union, persuaded some of the girls to bring little pots of gay crocuses or blue squills to school, and after these had been duly exhibited on a table in the lecture-hall, sent them through the agency of a "Children's Welfare Worker" to brighten the bedsides of various small invalids in the poorer quarters of the town and let them know that spring had arrived.
After a fortnight of slight fever and inflammation, the Englishman recovered coherence and thanked the Chaplain and his wife, and Lispeth especially Lispeth for their kindness.
Unwilling to waste further time, Lispeth mounted the platform, and rang the bell for silence. "Are we all here? Well, I can't wait for anybody else. Those who come in late will have to hear what they can, and you must tell them the rest afterwards. Oh, here they are! Quietly, please! There's plenty of room over there. Violet, will you shut the door?
Lispeth used to slate me sometimes for my nastiness. She called me 'a jealous blighter, and so I was! The girl of your fancy is a great deal nicer than I am, or ever can be, but I'll try to live up to her as well as I can, Bess, if you'll let me!" "Let you!" echoed Bess, linking her arm affectionately in that of her friend. "You're a perfect dear nowadays."
After these ringleaders marched a determined crowd waving flags made of handkerchiefs fastened to the end of rulers. A band, equipped with combs covered with tissue-paper torn from their drawing-books, played the strains of the "Marseillaise." They advanced towards the seniors in a very truculent fashion. "Well, really!" exclaimed Lispeth, recovering from her momentary amazement.
It was hard then to realize that the bleared, wrinkled creature, so like a wisp of charred rag, could ever have been "Lispeth of the Kotgarth Mission." "When halter and heel ropes are slipped, do not give chase with sticks but with gram." Punjabi Proverb.
Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or whether the gods of her own people would have done as much for her under any circumstances, I do not know; but she grew very lovely. When a Hill girl grows lovely, she is worth traveling fifty miles over bad ground to look upon. Lispeth had a Greek face one of those faces people paint so often, and see so seldom.
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