A Popular Schoolgirl quotes

“Poor little woman! Remember it’s just as hard for all the rest of us. We’ve each got a burden to carry at present. Suppose we see who can be pluckiest over it.

We’re fighting fortune now, instead of the Hun, and we must show her a brave face.

Won’t you march with the family regiment, and keep the colors flying?”

In spite of her most valiant efforts her hands trembled, and wrong chords crept in. She kept bravely at it, however, and managed to reach the end of the first movement, where she called a halt.

“It’s not talking⁠—it’s only stuttering and stammering on the piano,” she apologized.

Dr. Linton laughed. Her remark had evidently pleased him. He always liked a pupil who fell in with his humor.

“Barring the glue,” said Susie Wakefield. “It smells simply abominable when it boils over. Why doesn’t somebody bring out a patent for sweet-scented glue?”

“Sweet-scented glue! You Sybarite!”

“Why not? They could make it out of all those delicious gums and resins you read about in books on the Spice Islands, instead of—by the by, what is glue made of?”

“That’s helped us out of a fix! Don’t say again we’ve no luck!” cried Beatrice, wiping her boots carefully on the grass.

“They were angels in disguise!” sighed Ingred.

“Rather stout angels!” chuckled Verity. “Now, how are we going to get out of this field?”

“They were angels in disguise!” sighed Ingred.

“Rather stout angels!” chuckled Verity.

“Now, how are we going to get out of this field?”

… wall that overlooked the moor, watching great shafts of sunlight fall from a gray sky on to brown wastes of heather and bracken, listening to the call of the curlews or to the trilling autumn warble of the robin, perched on the red-berried hawthorn bush.

Kind Mother Nature could always soothe her spirits, and send her back with fresh courage for the day’s work.

And, in the evening, when husband and children came home to fire and lamplight, she had generally some nature notes to tell them, or some amusing little incident to make them laugh and forget their various woes and worries.

It was fairly early, and a hazy November sun had not yet drawn the moisture from the heather. On the moor the few trees were bare, but the golden autumn leaves still clothed the woods in the sheltered valley that stretched below.

Masses of gossamer covered with dewdrops lay among the bracken, like fairies’ washing hung out to dry.

There was a hint of hoarfrost under the bushes. The air had that delicious invigorating quality when every breath sets the body dancing.

Whether their original purpose was temple, astronomical observatory, or both is one of the riddles of antiquarian research, for neolithic man left no record of his doings beyond the weapons buried with him in his barrow.

Legend, however, like a busy gossip, had stepped in and supplied points upon which history was silent.

Traditions of the neighborhood explained the menhirs as twelve giants turned into stone by the magic powers of good King Arthur, who, in defiance of the claims of the isle of Avalon, was supposed to be buried in a hitherto unexplored chamber of the large …

she confided with energy to her sympathetic audience of one. “Ingred! That man knew what I was doing! I saw the horrid amusement in his face. He was laughing at me for all he was worth. I know he was!”

At eighteen it is an overwhelming matter to be laughed at.

Quenrede’s newly-developed dignity was decidedly wounded.

It was about this time that a general spirit of trouble and dissatisfaction seemed to creep into the school. How and where it started nobody knew, any more than one can trace the origin of influenza germs.

There is no epidemic more catching than grumbling, however, and the complaint spread rapidly.

It had the unfortunate effect of reacting upon itself. The fact that the girls were restive made the teachers more strict, and that in its turn produced fresh complaints.

By three o’clock the lecture hall was filled with what Lilias Ashby (who had undertaken to write a report for the school magazine) described as “a distinguished crowd.”

Fathers indeed were as few and far between as currants in a war pudding

, but mothers, aunts, and sisters had responded nobly to the invitations, and were being conducted round by the girls to see their special exhibits.

It’s going to be a hateful New Year for all of us—just a New Year of going without and scraping and saving and economizing—ugh! What a life!”

“Life’s mostly what we make it,” said Mother, who had quietly joined the circle.

“After all, what we think we want doesn’t always give the greatest happiness. Suppose each of us tries to let this be the best year we’ve ever had?

There would have been some éclat then in emerging from the chrysalis stage of the schoolroom and becoming a butterfly of society.

To make her first grownup appearance at Mrs. Desmond’s dance and in a homemade dress seemed not so much a “coming out” as an “oozing out.”

There are degrees in butterflies, and she feared her appearance would resemble not the gorgeous “Red Admiral” or “Painted Lady,” but the “Common White Cabbage.”

They all made exactly the same remarks about the excellence of the floor, the taste of the decorations, and the beauty of the music, and asked her if she had been to the pantomime, and whether she played golf.

Small talk is an art, and though Quenrede had many interests, and in ordinary circumstances could have discussed them, tonight she felt tongue-tied, and let the ball of conversation drop with a “yes” or “no” or “very.”

Dances with strangers who expected her to talk were bad enough, but the gaps in her program were worse. No doubt Mrs.

“But you’ve ‘come out!’ ” said Ingred with satisfaction as she subsided under her eiderdown.

“Oh yes, I’m most decidedly ‘out,’ ” murmured Quenrede.

“How about English spelling?” suggested Ingred. “You’ll want to write a letter occasionally!”

“I think by that time,” said Fil hopefully, “somebody will have invented a typewriter that can spell for itself. You’ll just press a knob for each word, you know!”

“There are about 3,000 words in common daily use!” laughed Verity. “If you need a knob for each, your typewriter will have to be the size of a church organ. It’ll want a room to itself!”

Those few brief words—“a most innocent soul who lived ten months”—told the tragedy of the cherished little daughter whose frail life faded in the fogs of the British climate about eighteen hundred years ago.

Hearts are the same all the world over, and the pretty dark-eyed Roman baby must have been laid to its rest with as much grief and sadness as the fair-haired darlings whom British mothers sometimes bury in Indian soil.

“It’s a sweet name, too—Simplicia Florentina!” mused Ingred. “I wonder what she would have grown up like. And what her history would have been! I’d give worlds to know more about her!”

It took Miss Strong a much longer time to write her postcards than she had originally intended, and while she was thus employed her girls spread themselves out in quest of flowers.

It is always amazing when you start rambling in company with others how quickly you can find yourself alone.

By the time Ingred had gathered a fragrant, sweet-smelling bunch and looked round for somebody to admire it, her schoolmates were gone. She hunted about for them, and noticed Verity’s green jersey and Kitty’s brown tam-o’-shanter in the wood above.

She had secretly envied her the possession of Rotherwood, but now she realized how little the house itself would mean without the happy home life in which brothers and sister had borne their part.

“I’d rather have the bungalow with the family, than Rotherwood all alone!” she ruminated.

“As for Muvkins, she’s one in a million. I believe she’d be cheery in a coal cellar, so long as she’d a solitary chick to keep under her wing.

There was just light enough in the garden to distinguish bushes as heavy masses, and to trace the paths from the grass. The air was sweet with the scent of flowers.

It is amazing how different conditions can alter a scene: at noon, with the hum from the busy streets, it was commonplace enough; by moonlight it became a mystic bower of enchantment.

The girls walked along very quietly, treading on the grass so as to make no noise. A slight mist was rising from the ground near the Abbey; in the rays of the moon it resembled a lake. Everything, indeed, was altered.

The girls walked along very quietly, treading on the grass so as to make no noise. A slight mist was rising from the ground near the Abbey; in the rays of the moon it resembled a lake. Everything, indeed, was altered.

The outline of the sumach bush was like a crouching tiger; the laburnum tassels waved like skeleton fingers.

It seemed a witching, unreal world.

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and though Nora, Fil, Ingred, and Verity might chafe at being debarred from tennis for a whole week, their adventure in the garden had given them an idea.

How it exactly originated could not be decided, for each fiercely claimed the full credit for it. Its evolution, however, was somewhat as follows:

Stage 7. Let us ask Miss Burd to let the hostel have a fancy-dress dance in the school garden.

Great minds generally think in company, and often hit upon the same invention at the same moment, so perhaps all four girls had an equal share in the brainwave.

They communicated it cautiously to companions, and as it “caught on” they sounded Mrs. Best, and finding her favorably disposed to the scheme, begged her to intercede for them with Miss Burd.