"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea----"
scanned Gyp in a singsong voice. Then she stopped abruptly; she realized that Miss Gray was not hearing a word that she was saying!
Miss Gray had asked Gyp to come to her after school. It was a glorious winter day and Gyp's friends were playing hockey on the little lake. Gyp had faced Miss Gray resentfully.
"Please scan three pages, Miss Westley," Miss Gray had said, putting a book into Gyp's hands. And now, in the middle of them, Miss Gray was staring out across the snowy slopes of the school grounds, not hearing one word, and blinking real tears from her pale-blue eyes!
Little Miss Gray, for years, had come and gone from Lincoln in such a mouse-like fashion that no one ever paid much attention to her; upon her changing classes, as an individual, she left scarcely any impression; as a teacher she was never cross, never exacting, gave little praise and less censure; she worked more like a noiseless, perfect machine than a human being.
Gyp had never noticed, until that moment, that she had blue eyes--very pretty blue eyes, fringed with long, dark lashes. No one could see them because she was nearsighted and wore big, round, shell-rimmed glasses, but now she had removed these in order to wipe her tears away. Gyp, fascinated by her discoveries, stared openly.
Gyp's heart never failed to go out to the downtrodden or oppressed, beast or human. Now she suddenly saw Millicent Gray, erstwhile teacher in Second-year English, as an appealing figure, very shabby, a pinched look on her oval-shaped face that gave the impression of hunger. Her hair would really be very pretty if she did not twist it back quite so tight. She was not nearly as old as Gyp had thought she was. And her tears were very pathetic; she was sniffing and searching in a pocket for the handkerchief that was probably in her knitting bag.
"T-that will d-do, Miss Westley," she managed to say, still searching and sniffing.
But Gyp stood rooted.
"I'm sorry you feel bad, Miss Gray. Will you take my handkerchief? It's clean," and Gyp, from the pocket of her middy blouse, proudly produced a folded square of linen.
"You wouldn't believe that just that could open the flood-gates of a broken heart," she exclaimed later to Jerry and Pat Everett, feeling very important over her astonishing revelation.
"Who'd ever dream that Miss Gray could squeeze out the littlest tear," laughed Pat, at which Gyp shook her head rebukingly.
"Teachers are human and have hearts, Pat Everett, even if they are teachers. And romance comes to them, too. Miss Gray is very pretty if you look at her real close and she's quiet because her bosom carries a broken heart."
Sympathetic Jerry thought Gyp's description very wonderful. Pat was less moved.
"What did she tell you, Gyp?"
Gyp hesitated, in a maddening way. "Well, I suppose it was giving her the handkerchief made her break down and I don't believe she thought I'd come straight out here and tell you girls. And I'm only telling you because I think maybe we can help her. After she'd taken the handkerchief and wiped her nose she took hold of my hand and pressed it hard and told me she hoped I'd never know what loneliness was. And then I asked her if she didn't have anyone and she said no--not a soul in the whole wide world cared whether she lived or died. Isn't that dreadful? And she said she didn't have a home anywhere, just lived in a horrid old boarding house. Well, she was beginning to act more cheerful and I was afraid she was recovering enough to tell me to go on with the scanning, so I got up my nerve and I asked her point-blank if she'd ever had a lover----"
"Gyp Westley----" screamed Pat.
"Well, there wasn't any use beating 'round the bush and I knew we'd want to know and I read once that men were the cause of most heartaches, so I asked her----"
"What did she say? Wasn't she furious?"
"No--I think she was glad I did. Maybe, if you didn't have any family and lived in a great big boarding house where you couldn't talk to anyone except 'bout the weather and the stew and things, you'd even like to confide in me. She just blushed and looked downright pretty, but dreadfully sad. She said she'd had a very, very dear friend--you could tell she meant a lover--but that it was all past and he had forgotten her. I suppose I should have said to her that it's 'better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,' but I just asked her if he was handsome, which was foolish, because she'd think he was if he was as homely as anything."
"And was he?"
"She said he was distinguished--a straight nose and a firm chin and black hair with a white streak running straight down through the middle, like Lee's black-and-white setter dog, I guess. Girls, mustn't it be dreadful to have to go on day after day with your heart like a cold stone inside of you and no one to love you and to teach school?"
Each girl, with her own life full to brimming with love, looked as though they felt very sorry, indeed, for poor little Miss Gray.
"Let's do something to make her happy," suggested Pat.
"Do you suppose we could find the man? They must have quarreled and maybe, if he knew----"
"There can't be many men with white streaks in their hair and if we get the other girls to help us, perhaps by watching real closely, we can find him."
"And I thought, too, we might send her some flowers after a few days without any name or any sign on them where they came from. She'll be dreadfully excited and curious and then in a week or so we can send some more----"
"Aren't flowers very expensive?" put in Jerry. Gyp understood her concern; Jerry had very little spending money.
"I know--Pat and I'll buy the flowers and maybe some of the others will help, and you write some verses to go with them, Jerry."
Though to write verses would, ordinarily, to Jerry be a most alarming task, she was glad of anything that she could do to help Miss Gray and assented eagerly.
Peggy Lee was enlisted in the cause, and the next day the conspirators made a trip to the florist's shop. They were dismayed but not discouraged by the exorbitant price of flowers; they scornfully dismissed the florist's suggestion of a "neat" little primrose plant--they were equally disdainful of carnations. Patricia favored roses, and when the florist offered them a bargain in some rather wilted Lady Ursulas, she wanted to buy them and put them in salt and water overnight, to revive them. Finally they decided upon a bunch of violets, which sadly depleted their several allowances. And Jerry attached her verses, painstakingly printed on a sheet of azure-blue notepaper in red ink. "Blue's for the spirit, you know, and the red ink is heart's blood. Listen, girls, isn't this too beautiful for words?" Gyp read in a tragic voice:
"Only to love thee, I seek nothing more,
No greater boon do I ask,
Only to serve thee o'er and o'er,
And in thy smile to bask.
"Only to hear thy sweet voice in my ear,
Though thy words be not spoken for me,
Only to see the lovelight in thy eyes,
The love of eternity.
"They're wonderful, Jerry! And so sad, too."
"Do they sound like a lover?" asked Jerry anxiously.
"Exactly," declared Pat, solemnly. "Oh, won't it be fun to see her open it? And she'll think, of course, that it comes from the black-and-white man."
"And we must each one of us pledge to keep our eyes open for the creature."
"Think of it, girls--if we could make Miss Gray happy again it would be something we could remember when we're old ladies. Mother told me once that things we do for other people to make them happy come back to us with interest."
In the English class, on the following day, four girls sat very demurely in the back row, their eyes riveted on their books. When presently there was a knock at the door (Gyp had timed carefully the arrival of the messenger), Pat Everett exclaimed, "my goodness" aloud, and Jerry dropped her book to the floor. But their agitation passed unnoticed; Miss Gray's attention was fixed upon the little square box that was brought to her.
Jerry had a moment of panic. She scribbled on the top of a page in her text-book: "What if she's angry?" To which Gyp replied: "If your life was empty, wouldn't you jump at a crumb?"
Only for a moment was the machinelike precision of the English class broken. Miss Gray untied the cord, and peeped under the cover. The girls, watching from the back row, saw a pink flush sweep from her small nose to the roots of her hair, then fade, leaving her very white. Then:
"Please continue, Miss Chase."
When the class was dismissed even Gyp had not the courage to linger and watch Miss Gray open the box. "She might suspect you," Patricia had warned. But at recess she rushed to the girls, her eyes shining.
"Jerry! Pat! She's crazy about 'em! I went in after the third hour and pretended I was hunting for my book. The violets were sitting up on her desk and she had a few of them fastened in her old cameo pin--and she looked different--already! Let's keep up our good work! Let's swear that we'll leave no stone unturned to find the black-and-white man!"
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