"Never mind!
Just wait!
A bright idea strikes me!"
"Oh! what?" cried the other three; but Rose only pursed up her mouth, arched he eye-brows, and vanished into her own room, locking the door behind her.
Mary Silver, finding herself shut out, sat down meekly in the hall till such time as it should please Rose to open the door.
This was not till the bath hour.
As Katy and Clover went by, Rose put her head out, and called that she would be down in a minute.
The bathing party consisted of eight girls, with Miss Jane for escort.
They were half way across the common before Miss Jane noticed that everybody was shaking with stifled laughter, except Rose, who walked along demurely, apparently unconscious that there was any thing to laugh at.
Miss Jane looked sharply from one to another for a moment, then stopped short and exclaimed,
"Rosamond Redding! how dare you?"
"What is it ma'am?" asked Rose, with the face of a lamb.
"Your bath towel! your sponge!" gasped Miss Jane.
"Yes, ma'am, I have them all," replied the audacious Rose, putting her hand to her hat.
There, to be sure, was the long crash towel, hanging down behind like a veil, while the sponge was fastened on one side like a great cockade; and in front appeared a cake of pink soap, neatly pinned into the middle of a black velvet bow.
Miss Jane seized Rose, and removed these ornaments in a twinkling.
"We shall see what Mrs. Florence thinks of this conduct," she grimly remarked. Then, dropping the soap and sponge in her own pocket, she made Rose walk beside her, as if she were a criminal in custody.
The bath-house was a neat place, with eight small rooms, well supplied with hot and cold water.
Katy would have found her bath very nice, had it not been for the thought of the walk home.
They must look so absurd, she reflected, with their sponges and damp towels.
Miss Jane was as good as her word.
After dinner, Rose was sent for by Mrs. Florence, and had an interview of two hours with her: she came out with red eyes, and shut herself into her room with a disconsolate bang.
Before long, however, she revived sufficiently to tap on the drawers and push through a note with the following words:—
"My heart is broken!
"R.R."
Clover hastened in to comfort her.
Rose was sitting on the floor, with a very clean pocket-handkerchief in her hand.
She wept, and put her head against Clover's knee.
"I suppose I'm the nastiest girl in the world," she said.
"Mrs. Florence thinks so.
She said I was an evil influence in the school.
Wasn't that un—kind?" with a little sob.
"I meant to be so good this term," she went on; "but what's the use?
A codfish might as well try to play the piano!
It was always so, even when I was a baby.
Sylvia says I have got a little fiend inside of me.
Do you believe I have?
Is it that makes me so horrid?"
Clover purred over her.
She could not bear to have Rose feel badly.
"Wasn't Miss Jane funny?" went on Rose, with a sudden twinkle; "and did you see Berry, and Alfred Seccomb?"
"No: where were they?"
"Close to us, standing by the fence.
All the time Miss Jane was unpinning the towel, they were splitting their sides, and Berry made such a face at me that I nearly laughed out.
That boy has a perfect genius for faces.
He used to frighten Sylvia and me into fits, when we were little tots, up here on visits."
"Then you knew him before you came to school?"
"Oh dear, yes!
I know all the Hillsover boys.
We used to make mud pies together.