The next morning proved a hard one for Peggy; the rhetoric lesson was the first that must be recited. She had studied it hard, but somehow the rules seemed to make little impression. Whenever she tried to fix them in her mind, there came between her and the page two melancholy blue eyes, and she seemed to hear a voice of singular quality, a voice with a thrill in it, saying, "Could'st love a Goat, Innocent?"

So she was not as well prepared as she should have been when she went into the class; and on meeting Miss Pugsley's cold greenish brown eye, what she did know seemed to evaporate from the top of her head, leaving a total blank. She stumbled and floundered; she did not know what an antecedent was, and she could not remember ever to have heard of a reciprocal pronoun.

"Pray, Miss Montfort, were you asleep or awake when you studied this lesson?" inquired Miss Pugsley, with acrid calm.

"I don't know!" replied Peggy, now thoroughly bewildered.

"Well, if you were asleep, let me recommend you to try it again when you wake up; or if you were awake, perhaps you might do it better in your sleep."

Peggy flushed scarlet, and the ready tears sprang into her eyes; but she forced them back, bit her lip, and tried not to feel the eyes of the whole class bent on her in amused astonishment. Miss Pugsley seemed to take positive pleasure in her ignorance and embarrassment. She put one question after another, each more ingeniously contrived than the last—or so it seemed—to show what Peggy did not know. At last, in self-defence, the poor child took refuge in one simple and invariable answer: "I don't know!" So confused was she that these words were the only ones she could utter, even when she knew the correct answer, or would have done so if she could have collected her wits. By the end of the hour, Peggy was entirely convinced that she was the dunce and butt of the school; that she knew nothing, and never would know anything.

It seemed a cruel stroke of fate that this terrible period should be followed by that of general history, for Peggy detested history, as some of my readers already know. She went into the next class-room with an aching head, and a heart throbbing with a sense of utter worthlessness in herself, and of bitter cruelty in others. She did not even look up at the teacher, but kept her eyes fixed on her desk, and answered the few questions that meant anything to her, sullenly and unwillingly. She did try at first to follow the lesson, but her head ached so, the words seemed to sing themselves into mere nonsense, and she soon gave up the attempt; the more so as this teacher, who had been observing her pretty closely, for some reason or other asked her very few questions. At last, however, the blow fell.

"Where did Philip of Macedon come from, Miss Montfort?"

"I don't know," said Peggy.

"Oh, I think you do," said Miss Cortlandt, with a pleasant smile, and checking, with a warning glance, the rising giggle.

"Try again, Miss Montfort. Philip the Great, Philip of Macedon,—where did he come from? Surely you can tell me!"

"I don't know," said Peggy, doggedly; and at the moment she actually did not.

"My dear child," said the teacher, "did you ever hear what was the colour of Washington's gray mare?"

"No, ma'am," said Peggy.

"Well, what was it?"

"I don't know."

Emily Cortlandt had graduated from college the year before. She laid down her pencil, and looked very kindly at the distracted girl.

"I think you are not feeling well, Miss Montfort," she said. "Does your head ache?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Peggy. She could not have said another word; her whole strength was needed to keep back the flood of tears that was rising, rising.

"You need not stay through the lesson," Miss Cortlandt went on, and the sympathy in her voice only brought the flood higher and nearer.

"You can make up the lesson to me some other time. Now, you would better go and lie down for a little, and then take a turn in the fresh air. Miss Bangs, what was the date of Philip's first invasion?"

Peggy never knew how she got out of the class-room. She longed to give at least a grateful look at the kind soul who had saved her, but her eyes were already swimming in tears. She fled along the corridor, sobbing hysterically, blinded with tears, conscious of only one thing, the desperate resolve to get to her room, before she broke down altogether. Flying thus around a corner, she rushed headlong into a group of girls who were gathered around something, she could not tell what. So violent was the shock that Peggy reeled and struck her head sharply against the wall. This brought her to herself. She caught back the sob on her lips, and dashed the tears from her eyes before any one saw them,—or so she hoped; then she looked to see what was going on. Next moment she had forgotten that there were such things as tears in the world.

There were six or eight girls in the group, mostly sophomores, though a few were freshmen. They were looking down at something—somebody—crouching on the floor against the wall, and their laughter, checked for an instant by Peggy's onset, broke out afresh. "Here's Peggy Montfort, just in time to see the fun. Look, Miss Montfort, and see the fashions! Straight from Paris, and the very last thing!"

The speaker was Blanche Haight, a tall sophomore with bleached hair, and eyes set too near together. She was considered a wit, and every time she spoke the other girls giggled and screamed.

The person crouching on the floor was Lobelia Parkins. Her head was pressed against the wall, her face hidden in her hands; misery and terror were in every line of her poor little shrinking figure, but this only gave added delight to her tormentors.

"Look, ladies, at the new sleeve!" cried Miss Haight, lifting the skinny arm, from which the blue poplin sleeve hung in an awkward fashion. "Did you ever see anything so exquisite? Look at the fringe, will you, and the pattern? I'm going to get Miss Russell to put her up on exhibition, so the whole school can have the benefit; it's a shame to keep it to ourselves!"

"He! he! he!" went all the girls. "Blanche, you are too funny for anything!"

"Where did your mother get it?" asked another; and this, as Peggy saw with a shock, was pretty Rose Barclay. "Did the ragman bring it around, or did she pick it up in the gutter? Say, Miss Parkins, I wish you'd tell us, 'cause we all want to know."

"Yes, of course we want to know!" cried Miss Haight. "I'm going to write this very night, to see if Mumma can't get me one like it. I never shall be happy till I—"

That sentence never was finished. The speaker found her own arm seized in a grip of iron, which forced her to drop the poor little arm in the blue sleeve. She was forced back against the wall, and found herself confronted by a pair of blue eyes blazing with righteous wrath.

"How dare you?" cried Peggy Montfort, in a voice that quivered with rage. "You mean, cowardly brute, how dare you? Touch her again, and I'll choke the words down your throat!"

Blanche Haight gasped for a moment; indeed, the whole group was cowed by this sudden vision of strength and fury. But she recovered herself in a moment.

"Well, indeed!" she said. "I should like to know what this means, Miss Montfort? I should like to know who gave you authority to choke people, and abuse them, and call them names?"

"You'll find out what it means!" said Peggy, waiving the second question, and replying to the first. "If you touch that child again, or so much as speak to her, I'll choke you."

"Girls, do you hear this?" cried Blanche Haight. "Are you going to stand by, and let this girl ride over us?"

"Shame!" cried the girls. "Bully!"

"Bully!" cried Peggy, dropping her hold of Miss Haight, and turning to face the others. "You call me a bully, and you yourselves, eight great grown girls, standing around to torment and torture this poor helpless child? Shame on you! Shame on you all, every one! I'm ashamed to be in the same school with you. I—" (Here, I am sorry to say, Peggy forgot that she was a young lady, forgot everything save that she was the daughter of hot-blooded James Montfort.) "I could whip the whole lot of you, and I'll do it if you dare to say 'Boo!' but you don't!"

It was a fact that no one did say "Boo!" There was a pause, Peggy standing with folded arms before the shrinking child, her whole figure dilated with passion, till she seemed to tower above the rest, who for their part cowered before her.

Rose Barclay was the first to speak.

"We are very fortunate to find a leader for the freshman class," she said, spitefully, "and such a leader! Miss Montfort is too high-toned to help a classmate with her lesson, but not too high-toned to talk like a Bowery rowdy. Come, along, girls! I for one don't care to listen to any more such refined, elegant talk!"

"Yes, you'd better go along!" said Peggy, the Valkyr, briefly.

"Pray, may I ask," said Blanche Haight, with a bitter sneer, "are you monitor of this corridor?"

"No," said a voice behind her; "but I am."

A girl had come quietly up the stairs, and was now standing close beside the excited group, none of whom had seen or heard her,—a tall girl, with red-gold hair, dressed as if she had just come from a journey.

"I am the monitor of this corridor," she repeated. "Please go to your rooms, or I shall be obliged to report you."

The girls shrunk together, whispering, the freshmen questioning the sophomores.

"Who is it? Who is it?"

"Hush! It's the junior president. Come along!"

The group melted away; another moment, and all were gone save Peggy, who was now on the floor, with her arms around the little miserable creature, who still shrank close against the wall, as if her life depended on the contact.

"There, dear!" she cried. "They are gone. Come! Don't huddle up so, you poor little thing. Those brutes are gone, and there's nobody here but me, Peggy, and—" she glanced up at the tall girl. "Oh! won't you help me?" she cried. "I think—she doesn't seem to hear what I am saying. Oh, is she dead?"

"No," said the monitor. "I think she has fainted, though, poor little soul! We must carry her to her room. Do you know where it is? I have only just come back, and don't know where the freshmen are."

"No, I don't know, but I'll take her to my room; I'm in No. 18. Oh, I can carry her alone; she's all skin and bone; she doesn't weigh anything."

The little figure in the staring poplin gown hung quite limp, as Peggy lifted it. "You'd better let me help," said the tall girl, kindly. "We can make her more comfortable; so!"

Together they carried her to Peggy's room, and laid her on the bed. It was really more fright and distress than actual fainting, for she soon opened her eyes, and looked eagerly at Peggy, but closed them again with a faint cry, at sight of the stranger.

"You needn't be afraid of her!" cried Peggy, eagerly. "She isn't one of them; she's none of that horrid crowd. I don't know who you are," she said, "but I'm ever and ever and ever so much obliged to you. I don't know whether you heard what they were saying."

And she poured out an indignant account of the cruelty she had witnessed and put a stop to. The stranger's eyes were stern enough, as she listened. "I heard only the end of it," she said, briefly, "but where I see Blanche Haight, I am never surprised at anything cruel or cowardly. I am very glad to know you; it was a mercy that you happened to come along just then. I hope we shall be friends, Miss—is it Miss Montfort?"

"Oh, that I will!" cried Peggy, responding with all her warm heart to the sweet smile and the lovely look in the clear blue eyes. "Oh, I should like to ever so much; but I don't know your name, do I?"

The stranger smiled again. "They call me the Snowy Owl," she said, "but my name is Gertrude Merryweather."