how you tempt me!” she said. “How you tempt me! I did not know I could be so wicked as to listen to you; but I am tempted – tempted!”
“Of course you are, darling. Who would not be who was in your shoes? Isn’t it the law of life to do the very best for one’s self?”
“Oh, but it isn’t the right law!” gasped poor Priscilla.
“Well, right or wrong,” answered Annie, “it is the wisest law.”
“But even – even if I did it,” said Priscilla, “how is the money to be got?”
“You leave that to us,” said Annie. “Your term’s fees will be paid, and there will be something over. Leave all that to us.”
“Go away now,” said Priscilla; “don’t talk to me any more at all; I must have time to think. Oh! I don’t want to do wrong. I must pray to God to help me not to yield to you.”
“You will not do that,” said Annie, “for your own heart, and every argument in your mind, are inclining you in the other direction. I leave you now, for I feel certain of you; but Mabel and I will visit you to-morrow morning at five o’clock.”
“You can’t come in, for the door will be locked.”
“You know,” said Annie, staggered for a moment, “that it is against the rules for any girl to lock her door at night.”
“It will be a much lesser transgression on my part to lock my room door than to allow you and Mabel in,” answered Priscilla.
“Well, we will come on the chance,” replied Annie. “Ta-ta for a time, Pris. Oh, what a jolly year you will have, and how hard you will work! How I shall rejoice to see it! – for, whatever you must think of me, I at least am not selfish. I lose my dear friend Mabel by this scheme, and I keep you, who have never yet been my very special friend; but you will be when we return together to Lyttelton School next autumn. Good-bye, till to-morrow morning.”
Annie tripped from the room.
Chapter Five
Annie’s Scheme
There are at all schools girls of different degrees of talent. There are the brilliant girls, the idle girls, the plodding girls. Now Annie belonged to the middle class. She knew how essential it was for her to work hard unless she were to accept a fate which she considered too horrible to contemplate – namely, that of companion to kind Uncle Maurice in the country rectory. Her hope was to do so well at school that she might, when she left, induce her uncle to send her for at least a year to Paris in order to put what might be called the final polish on her education. Then, if her present plans went well, she might go into society with the aid of Mabel Lushington, who of course would be from henceforth in her power.
Now Annie had a fairly good gift for writing, and this gift on the present occasion she put absolutely at the disposal of her friend. Poor Mabel, excited by the scheme which Annie had proposed, trembling with fear that it might be found out, could not have written a single line of coherent English were it not for Annie’s clearer and cleverer brain.
As they sat for hours together in the summer-house, Annie’s thoughts really filled Mabel’s manuscript.
“I will dictate to you, and you will put down exactly what I say,” remarked Annie. “Now then, fire away. Idealism. You must get a sort of epitome of what your thoughts are on the subject.”
“I have not any,” said Mabel. “I can’t give an epitome of what I know nothing about.”
“Oh, come, Mabel; you are a goose! Here, let me dictate.”
She began. Her sentences had little depth in them, but they were at least expressed in fairly good English, and would have passed muster in a crowd. After a long time the task was completed, and an essay was produced – an essay, compared to the one which poor Mabel had already written, almost fine in its construction. Annie, as she read it over, was in raptures with it.
“I only trust it is not too good,” she said. “Don’t you think it sounds very nice when I read it aloud, Mabel?”
“I suppose it does,” answered Mabel. “I have got a horrid headache; I hate sitting up all night.”
“You will have to sacrifice something to your year’s bliss,” replied Annie. “Now then, May, that is done. I have given you a paper. At five o’clock we will both go into Priscie’s room. When there, a little transaction will very briefly take place. You will have to promise Pris that you will pay her school fees for another year – namely, for three whole terms; and she, in return for this kindness, will sign this essay as her own, and will hand it in as her essay during the course of the morning. Miss Phillips will lock it up, and it will lie perdu until the great prize day. Pris meantime will have given you a really good paper, which you will sign and give in as your own. Thus your victory will be accomplished, and you need dread nothing further.”
“But,” said Mabel, “I am looked upon as rather a fool in the school; no one for a moment thinks me clever.”
“I am coming to that point. For the next fortnight I shall make myself intensely busy in circulating a little story. You must pretend to know nothing about it, and in all probability the tale will not reach your ears. But this story is to the effect that you are in reality a sort of hidden genius; in short, that you are a poet and write verses in private. Now what do you think of that? Am not I a friend worth having?”
“You are wonderfully clever,” said Mabel. “I begin to be almost afraid of you.”
“Oh, you needn’t be that, dear. Who would be afraid of poor little Annie?”
“I don’t know,” said Mabel. “Your eyes look quite wicked sometimes. You must be frightfully wicked, you know, to have thought out this scheme so cleverly.”
“I am not more wicked than you are – not one single bit,” cried Annie. “Only I have the courage of my convictions, and the ability to think things out and to save my friends. If you imagine that I am unhappy now, you are vastly mistaken. Far from being unhappy, I feel intensely triumphant; for I have managed to help three people – Priscie, you, and myself.”
“Oh Annie!” said Mabel, “I am not at all sure that Aunt Henrietta will invite you to Paris.”
“Aren’t you?” said Annie. She took the essay as she spoke, and rolled it up. She then proceeded to gather up some loose pages of foolscap paper, pen and ink, and blotting-paper, and finally she blew out the candles and added them to a little parcel which she proceeded to stow away in a small basket.
“We will go back to the house now,” she said. “We must tread very softly.”
Mabel found herself trembling a great deal and wishing most heartily she was out of this scrape as she followed Annie across the grass. There was a brilliant moon in the sky, and there was a little piece of lawn, bare of any shelter, which they had to cross in order to get to the home. Should any one happen to be looking out of a window, that person could not fail to see the girls as they crossed this moonlit lawn. Mabel thought of it with growing terror as they returned home, and when they found themselves standing at the edge of a belt of dark pine-trees preparatory to rushing across the lawn, she clutched her companion by the arm.
“Oh, I know we shall be seen!” she cried. “Oh, I wish I had not done it!”
“It
