Chapter VIII: The Result of Professor Minturn's Experiment

It was a long time before either Ethel or Gertrude answered. They had not been more surprised at sight of the Junior banner above their heads. They were both accustomed to being liked, not hated.

"What makes you say that?" asked Ethel.

Her cheeks were hot. Sarah's climbing to the roof of the gymnasium was not in accord with the character which she bore in the school. Certainly that was not the way to please teachers, or to win their favor for herself.

Sarah's voice shook. She did not feel the pain in her hands. The lights had gone out, and they seemed to be alone in the locker-room.

"Because I meant it." Then good English flew to the winds. "You are all the time cross over me. You are too high up. I am dumb and I can't always talk right, and I come from Spring Grove post-office, but I don't do _you_ anything. I never did you anything. I--"

There was the spurt of a match, and Gertrude lit the gas. Then she laid her hands on Sarah's shoulders and turned her to the light. Her voice trembled also.

"Look here. You've been frank, and I shall, too. Did you ever report your room-mates for making a noise?"

"No." The answer was explosive.

"Do you tell Miss Ellingwood everything that you can find out?"

Sarah laughed hysterically. "I don't find out anything to tell her. How should I?"

"Did you never tell her about your room-mates?"

"I never say nothing from them at all to nobody. I leave them alone. But they won't leave me alone. They made me throw water on Miss Ellingwood, they made me--" She looked about so wildly that the girls were frightened.

Gertrude put a steadying arm round her.

"You were right. We have been mean."

Sarah looked at her piteously. "_Ach_, I--I shouldn't have talked so. I--"

Ethel looked gravely into Gertrude's eyes.

"Yes, you should," she said to Sarah. "Now, come over to our room and I'll tie up your hands for you. You mustn't tell anybody that it was you that slid down the pole."

"No, ma'am. I wish I could go in my bed. If I don't go in my bed, I won't know my lessons for to-morrow."

"You shall go to bed."

But Miss Ellingwood's room was crowded with guests, and there was the sound of many voices in Sarah's.

"It is no place I can sleep," she cried.

The pain in her hands had come back, and made her feel faint. It seemed to her that she should die if she could not sleep.

"Yes, there is," said Ethel and Gertrude together.

And so with peaceful heart and bandaged hands, Sarah slept in Ethel's bed, while Ethel and Gertrude whispered together across the room.

"It was in the air," said Ethel. "Everybody distrusted her."

Gertrude sat up in bed. "I think we've been hateful, _hateful_," she said. "Listen!"

"Some people always talk in their sleep," answered Ethel. "I guess she's tired, poor child. I'm not sleepy, are you?"

"No," said Gertrude, "I'm ashamed. Are you?"

Following the gymnasium entertainment came a few days of examinations, then a day of hurried packing, before the scattering of five hundred boys and girls to their homes for a week. Sarah was to go home; she had been thinking for a long time of the snowdrops which would be in bloom on the south side of the house, and the daffodils which must be poking up through the earth. But now at the last moment, she did not seem to care. If they would only let her go to bed and sleep and sleep! She feared that some day she might drop over asleep where she stood, and frighten Miss Ellingwood and Ethel and Gertrude. How absurd it would be to fall asleep in the middle of the day! Mabel Thorn and Ellen Ritter often took naps after dinner, but Sarah had not slept in the daytime since she was a baby.

If she had been a little older or a little less forgiving, she might have been slower to accept the friendship of Ethel and Gertrude, offered at once in many penitent and friendly ways. But almost immediately the hardness went out of her heart and the tremor from her voice when she saw them or spoke to them. Finally she felt the same soft, happy thrill of relief that she had felt when Aunt 'Liza appeared with her gift of cake and _schnitz_.

"Nobody is cross over me, and I am not cross over anybody," she said to herself.

And in a day or two she did tumble over as she had feared. Ethel and Gertrude were waiting for her on the steps. She was going with them to the shop to order viands for a feast to be held in their room that evening. Miss Ellingwood had gone walking, and Sarah grew heated and impatient over the fastening of her sailor suit, and the tying of her red scarf.

She did not wait for the elevator, but ran downstairs, jumping over the last step of each flight, and then going more sedately out past the office door. She remembered afterwards that she had felt a little dizzy, and that she had once put out her hand to steady herself. She saw Professor Minturn coming toward her on his way to the faculty meeting in the office, and she tried to straighten up and bow to him. Instead, she pitched forward at his feet.

In one step, Professor Minturn was beside her. He expected to see her scramble up, red-faced and embarrassed.

"Oh, I hope you haven't hurt yourself!" he began to say.

But Sarah did not move.

"Miss Wenner!" he said, in a tone which brought Dr. Ellis and the Secretary and Eugene hurrying from the office. By that time, he had lifted her from the floor.

"She seems to have fainted," he said.

Dr. Ellis swept a pile of catalogues from the office-sofa.

"Lay her down there, Minturn. Eugene, get some water."

The color was coming back faintly to Sarah's cheeks when Miss Ellingwood walked in. Then it vanished once more, and she lay limp and deadly white.

"Telephone for Dr. Brownlee," commanded Dr. Ellis. "Ah, there, she's opening her eyes. Look here, Sarah!"

Sarah smiled faintly.

"I feel so--so--queer," she whispered. "I would like to go in my bed."

"You shall," Dr. Ellis assured her. "Eugene, do you think you can carry her upstairs?"

Professor Minturn held out his arms. He was frowning; he felt suddenly a great anxiety and uneasiness. But he was sure that he had asked the child whether she was well; he could not have been so careless as to give her extra work without ascertaining that. She had always looked strong. He could not believe that this pale child could be that same rosy-cheeked little girl who had worked with such spirit.

"Let me take her upstairs," he said nervously.

By the time he returned, Dr. Brownlee was coming in at the front door.

"You'll come down and tell us at once how she is and what is the matter, doctor?" he said. "She's a favorite pupil of mine."

Then he went in and took his seat by the window in the faculty room, among his colleagues who were waiting for him, and the meeting was called to order.

Dr. Brownlee tapped at the door before the business was fairly begun.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I thought I could get back before your meeting was in session."

"Come in," invited Dr. Ellis. "How is your patient? What is the trouble?"

Dr. Brownlee's answer was prompt and to the point.

"Overstudy."

"Impossible!" answered Dr. Ellis just as promptly. "She is a sub-Junior, and the sub-Junior branches are not hard, and she is a bright girl and was well prepared."

Dr. Brownlee did not like to be contradicted.

"She's been talking incoherently about extra history and extra geography and extra something else. I don't remember what the other is. She doesn't look like a girl who should have any extras of any kind. At least not now. I don't know what she looked like when she came here."

"She looked like a strong, healthy country girl. She was slender, but she looked well. She has had regular exercise in the gymnasium, and she hasn't had any extra work to do, I am positive."

Professor Minturn rose suddenly.

"I have always had a theory that the sub-Junior and the Junior History could be advantageously combined. I thought Miss Wenner was a good subject upon whom to try it. I see now that I was wrong." And he sat down and stared out the window.

The teacher of Geography got more slowly to his feet.

"I meant to report to you, Dr. Ellis, but I forgot it, that Miss Wenner had been taking the Junior Geography. She was considerably ahead of the sub-Junior class, and so I allowed her to begin the Physical Geography, and perhaps she has been going a--a little faster than the--the rest of the class. She was so enthusiastic, it was a pleasure to teach her. I--I have never had a pupil like her."

Dr. Ellis smiled queerly.

"Are there any more confessions to be made?"

Young Mr. Sattarlee rose from his place at the back of the room. He did not look at Dr. Ellis, or at any of his colleagues, but stared straight over their heads. There was no one in the room who did not know of his devotion to Miss Ellingwood, and Sarah's constant association with her.

"She has been reading a little Latin at sight for me," he said. "She did it very well."

"She seems to have done very well for all of you," said Dr. Ellis grimly. "I wish that I could feel that we had done as well by her."

Dr. Brownlee stood motionless at the door. He was polite enough not to say, "I told you so," though restraining himself must have cost considerable effort.

"Put her to bed at once over in the Infirmary where it's quiet," he commanded. "I'll see the nurse. And keep her there for two weeks. Then, if she goes slowly for the rest of the year, doing only her own regular work, and that as easily as possible, she'll get through without any injury to herself. Don't let her go home for the vacation. She isn't fit for the journey or the excitement of seeing people. I'll be down to-morrow morning again. Good-by."

At first Sarah lay very still and stared at the infirmary ceiling. She did not remember being carried thither, and it seemed to her that she spent days in trying to realize where she was. She remembered afterwards that she was constantly disturbed by a person in a white dress who insisted that she must eat and drink when she did not wish to eat and drink.

"It is very good," the person in white would say coaxingly, and Sarah would rejoin politely but a little wearily,--

"Is it so? Then won't you please eat it? I don't want to eat."

But all her protestations made no difference; the hot broth or cold milk was poured down her throat.

Once a tall man spent several hours by her bed, and fed her and held her hand and was very strong and comforting. After he had gone she said to the nurse, as though she had made a great discovery, "Why, that was William!" and the nurse laughed and said, "Yes."

Slowly she began to distinguish other faces, those of three repentant professors, who brought her flowers and sent her fruit and squab, and Miss Ellingwood, equally repentant and even more attentive, who made Sarah proud by whispering to her that she was going to marry Mr. Sattarlee, and that no one but Sarah was to know it until school was over.

Presently Ethel and Gertrude came, one at a time, and one day, after she was sitting up, Edward Ellis, with his mother and an armful of flowers.

"I never knew that being sick was like this!" she said to her nurse.

"It isn't for everybody," answered the nurse, smiling.

At the end of two weeks she was allowed to get up, and even to study a little. Every one was anxious to help her. Eugene sprang to take her up in the elevator, even though it was not elevator hours, and Mabel and Ellen said awkwardly that if she would come back and sleep in her own room they would be very quiet. Fortunately, they made the offer before Miss Ellingwood, who said at once that she could not spare Sarah. It was amazing how the sentiment of the school had changed during her illness.

Dr. Ellis stopped her and spoke to her whenever he met her in the hall, and one day he asked her to come into his office.

"Sarah," he said, "I had a talk with your brother about you, and what he told me made me very proud to have you here, and more sorry than ever that between us we should have let you get sick. Now every Monday morning I want you to come in and report to me how you feel. No, we'd better make it Friday evening. One is most apt to be tired on Friday evening. And Sarah,"--he smiled at the sudden flush of frightened color,--"you won't climb any more gymnasium beams, will you?"

Sarah clasped her hands.

"_Ach_, no! I--I was up before I thought. That is the trouble with me. I do things before I think always. I--I promise."

She went out of the office with her old swift step. She felt almost entirely well physically. Mentally, she seemed a stranger to herself. Her illness, her watching Miss Ellingwood's happiness, her association with the older girls, made her feel grown up. She was homesick for the twins and Albert and the farm and her old, childish self.

The solicitude of the professors was amusing to see.

"You have been over the year's work," Professor Minturn reminded her. "Now you will have to do only a little reviewing, just a little each day, Sarah." It was strange how to faculty and girls alike she had become Sarah instead of Miss Wenner. "You needn't come to class regularly. You can spend that time in study, and I will give you a shorter recitation by yourself."

"_Ach_, no, I thank you!" cried Sarah. It was only under special stress of surprise or gratitude that she said _ach_ now. "I will come to class, thank you."

The Geography teacher said that he would go over all the Political Geography with her, and Mr. Sattarlee did not say a word to Miss Ellingwood in the evenings until he had heard Sarah's Latin lesson for the next day. It must have been a good deal of a sacrifice, for they had many things to say to each other.

And day by day the spring passed. The maples on the campus budded and burst into full leaf, the oaks and hickories followed more slowly. The air was full of the song of birds and the scent of flowers, and slowly the ruddy color came back to Sarah's cheeks to stay.

But she was strangely nervous. Each hour that brought home and summer nearer brought also the dreaded ordeal of State Board examinations a little closer. One might study faithfully through the year, and pass the faculty examinations brilliantly, and one's efforts count for nothing unless the state also put its seal upon the results. And Sarah became each day more certain that she should not pass.

"It's exactly like a funeral," wailed Ethel Davis. "They come on Wednesday night, seven of them, county superintendents and Normal School principals, and the next morning they begin to examine us, and in the afternoon they examine us again, and then they give us ice-cream for supper when nobody has any appetite for ice-cream, and in the evening sometimes there are left-over examinations, and then we spend the whole night worrying for fear we haven't passed, and they spend the whole of the next day correcting papers,--I'm always glad when it's sweltering hot!--and then they insult us by giving us more ice-cream for supper, and then we go into the chapel to hear whether we have passed."

"I won't pass," said Sarah in despair. "I can't pass."

Ethel laughed.

"Nonsense! Of course you'll pass, child. Why, you have only Spelling and Political Geography and Arithmetic and Physiology to pass. And you always know your Spelling, and you're ahead in Geography. You are a little gosling. Now suppose you had six branches, Latin and History and Physical Geography and Grammar and Drawing and Civil Government. What would you do then, young lady?"

"I should die," said Sarah solemnly.

"But you'll have them next year."

"No," answered Sarah. "I do not believe I will be here next year. The twins must soon have their chance. I cannot take two years to one class. And if they did let me come back, I would be taking Arithmetic and Spelling and Geography and Physiology over again, and you and Gertrude would be two classes ahead of me. That is the way it would be."

Ethel looked at her sharply.

"You come out for a walk," she said cheerfully; and she took Sarah's books almost by force. She and Gertrude had had a talk with Dr. Ellis, and no dragons could have insisted more firmly than they upon the carrying out of both the letter and the spirit of Dr. Brownlee's directions.