Page 44 - An Australian Lassie

CHAPTER XI

THE ARTTST BY THE WAYSTDE

Elizabeth Bruce was "detained for inattention."

No one else out of all the four and thirty scholars of Wygate School was kept in to-day. One after the other,
hands folded behind them, they had marched to the door. Then delightful sounds--the scuffling of feet, stifled
screams, gigglings and low buzzings of talk--had stolen over the partition that separated the cloak-room from
the class-room, and Elizabeth, sitting on the high-backed form, with all the other empty forms in front of her,
nibbled her pencil in melancholy loneliness.

She wondered if Nellie Underwood and Cyril would wait for her. Only yesterday she had waited a dreary hour
for them and had carried Cyril's bag home for him to ease his wounded spirit.

Then she began her task. She seized a slate, arranged two slate-pencils to work together and expedite her task
and wrote: "Elizabeth Bruce detained for inattention."

When she had written the statement ten times the silence in the cloak-room struck chill upon her. All the rest
had found their hats and bonnets then and gone outside.

She sat on the floor under her desk and tried to see the playground through the open door. Two small
pinkly-clad figures dashed past the door, chased by a maiden in blue--all screaming and laughing.

"Nell Underwood!" ejaculated Betty gladly, and went back to her slate warmed and cheered.

She made her pencils work harder than before, kneeling upon the form in an excess of industry.

Even as she wrote the statement for the fortieth time, voices and laughter came from the playground--but a
cold silence had come by the fiftieth.

At the sixtieth her little moist hand was cramped, and she had to stay to work her fingers rapidly. At the
seventieth the tears were trickling down her cheeks, for she was only Elizabeth Bruce "detained for
inattention," the schoolroom was only a schoolroom, and the forms were only forms--and empty. And that
was the master down at the desk there, exercise books and slates around him and a pen behind his ear. For a
space the tears splashed down hard and fast upon her slate and the sight of the big drops aroused her self-pity.
The larger the splashes the larger her self-sorrow.

A sharp "Go on with your work, Elizabeth Bruce" waked her to the necessity of drying her eyes and slate and
adjusting her pencils for again writing, "Elizabeth Bruce detained for inattention."

But at the eightieth time of writing it, she was no longer Elizabeth Bruce, the daughter of a moneyless author.
Her name was now Geraldine Montgomery, and she was the adopted daughter of a millionaire. Her mother,
she had decided, was a gipsy, and was even now hovering near at hand to steal back her beautifully dressed
child.

By the time she had written the melancholy statement of Elizabeth Bruce's detention, her face had all its old
smiling serenity again.

She rose, sighing thankfully, and collecting her slates, walked down soberly to the busy master at his desk.