It is a common error that to send a girl into a boarding-school to finish her education is to bring her out a model, not only in learning, but in accomplishments and character.

Here were two hundred girls, coming from nearly two hundred different families, each one brought up, until she was in her teens, in different ways. Looking over the population of a small village, the most careless observer must see how unlike the homes are; how every grade of morals and manners is represented, and with what telling effect they show themselves in the characters of the young trained under their roofs.

It happened often that Montrose Academy was looked upon by anxious parents—who were just discovering, in wilfulness, disobedience, perhaps in matters more serious even than these, the mistakes they had made in the education of their daughters—as a sort of reformatory school, where Miss Ashton took in the erring, and after one or more years sent them out perfect in every good work and way.

While Miss Ashton made all inquiries in her power 129 to prevent any undesirable girls from joining her school, she was often imposed upon, sometimes by concealments, and not unseldom by positive falsehoods, but oftener by the parental fondness which could see nothing but good in a spoilt, darling child.

It often happened that with just such characters Miss Ashton was very successful, not seldom receiving a girl of a really fine nature which had been distorted by home influences, and sending her away, after years of patient work, with this nature so fully developed and improved that her whole family rose to her standard.

Instances of this kind made Miss Ashton careful in her discipline. She well understood that a girl once expelled from a school, no matter how lightly her friends might appear to regard the occurrence, was under a ban, which time and circumstances might remove, but might not.

In the case of this sleigh-ride, the disobedience to known and strictly enforced rules made her more anxiety than any case of a similar kind had given her for years.

She knew now the names of the girls concerned: they had given her trouble before. Mamie Smythe she had often been on the point of sending home, but she was one of those characters with fine traits, capable of being very good or very bad in her life’s work. The mother was a wealthy widow, Mamie her only child. Spoiled by weak and foolish fondness she had been; but her brightness, her lovableness, her cheery, witty, sunshiny ways remained. 130

Evidently, here she was the accountable one; she should be expelled as a lesson to the school, but to expel her meant, what?

She had wealth, she had position, she would in a few years be able to wield an influence that, in the right direction, would outweigh that of almost any other girl in school.

To be sent home, back to that weak mother, with a life of frivolous pleasures before her, what, under these circumstances, was it the wisest and best thing to do?

Favoritism for the rich or the poor was not one of Miss Ashton’s faults. By this time the whole school knew of the ride, of its discovery, and was holding its breath over the probable consequences.

The girls said, “Miss Ashton grew thin and pale from the worry.” The feeling of the school, most of whom were tenderly attached to her, was decidedly against those who had troubled her; and if she could have known the true state of the case, when she was neither eating nor sleeping, in her anxiety to do what was right, she would have found that the good for order, discipline, and propriety, which was growing from this evil done, was to exceed any influence she could hope to exert, even from the severest act of just discipline.

She was to be helped in a most unexpected way.

Two days after her interview with Myra Peters, there was a soft tap on her door, and opening it, there stood Mamie Smythe! 131

Her face, usually covered with smiles, was grave and even sad.

“Miss Ashton,” she said, without waiting to close the door, “please don’t be hard on the other girls. It was all my fault; I was the Eve that tempted them. I know it was wrong; I know it was dreadful wrong! I was worse than Eve; I was the serpent that tempted Eve! They wouldn’t a single one of them have gone if it hadn’t been for me! Do, please, Miss Ashton, punish me, and not them! They never, never, never would have gone if I hadn’t tempted them. Please, please, Miss Ashton! I’ll do anything; I’ll get extra lessons for a year! I won’t have a single spread; I’ll be good; you won’t know me, Miss Ashton, I’ll be so good; and I’ll bear any punishment. You may ferule me, as they do in district schools,” and she held out a little diamond-ringed hand toward Miss Ashton; “I’ll be shut up for a week in a dark closet, and live on bread and water. You may do anything you please with me, only spare them,” and she looked so earnestly and imploringly up in Miss Ashton’s face, that her heart, in spite of her better judgment, was touched; all she said was,—

“Tell me about it, Mamie.”

“When Susan gave me the note,” began Mamie. Miss Ashton started. “Susan who?” she asked, for Susan Downer had not confessed to any note; indeed, had virtually denied connection with the ride.

“Susan Downer, of course; she gave me the note. 132 Her brother brought it to her, and I was wild with joy to have a sleigh-ride. It was such a bright moon, and the sleighing looked so fine, I wanted all day to ask you to let me have a big sleigh, and take the girls out, but I knew you wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I should have,” interrupted Miss Ashton.

“That’s just awful,” said Mamie, after a moment’s reflection; “and if I’d been brave enough to ask you, nothing of this would have happened.

“I hadn’t time to think only of the girls—you know them all, Miss Ashton!”

“And who were the boys?” asked Miss Ashton, thinking perhaps she might aid the other troubled principal.

“The boys! oh, the boys!” and Mamie’s face looked truly distressed now. “Please don’t ask me, Miss Ashton. I’d cut my tongue out before I’d tell you!”

“Very well, go on with your ride.”

Then Mamie repeated fully and truly all that a girl in the flush of excitement caused by a stolen sleigh-ride could be expected to remember, not palliating one thing, from the supper to the dance, and the clamber in at midnight through the open window.

If at some points a little laugh gurgled up from her fun-loving soul, as she told her tale, Miss Ashton understood, and forgave it.

“I thank you, Mamie,” said she at last; and she stroked the little hand given to her so loyally for the sacrificial feruling, but she turned her eyes away. 133 What Mamie might have read there, she dared not trust to the girl’s quick sight; indeed, she hardly dared to trust the feeling that prompted it in herself.

There was no use to have another Faculty meeting, and depend upon it for help; she must settle the trouble alone.

It was Susan Downer who was next called to the principal’s room.

She went tremblingly. What was to happen to her now? Miss Ashton knew the girls’ names who went on the sleigh-ride, and as yet no one had been punished. Could it be about “Storied West Rock”? How Susan by this time hated its very name, and how much she would have given if she had never known it, she could best have told.

“Susan,” said Miss Ashton, as with a pale face and downcast eyes the girl stood before her, “when I asked you about your brother’s visit to you on the night of the sleigh-ride, you did not tell me of the note he gave you, and you gave to Mamie Smythe. If you had, you would have saved me many troubled hours.”

“You did not ask me,” said Susan promptly.

“True. Did you know the contents of the note?”

“Mamie asked me to go with them, but I refused. I was afraid you wouldn’t like it, and I’d much rather lose a ride any time than displease you;” and Susan, as she said this, looked bravely in Miss Ashton’s face. 134

“That’s all,” the principal said gravely, and Susan, with a lighter heart than that with which she had entered, left the room; but Miss Ashton thought, as she watched the forced smile on the girl’s face, “There’s one that can’t be trusted; what a pity, for she is not without ability!” Then she remembered the story she had read and praised, and wondered over it.

Two days before the time for the term to close, Miss Ashton received this note:—

Our dear Miss Ashton,—We, the undersigned, do regret in sackcloth and ashes our serious misconduct in going away at an improper time, and in an improper manner, on a sleigh-ride, without your consent and approval.

We promise, if you will forgive us, and restore us to your trust and affection, that we will never, NEVER be guilty of such a misdemeanor again. That we will try our best faithfully to observe the rules of the school, and endeavor to be good and faithful scholars.

Pray forgive and test us!

Mamie Smythe, Helen Norris,
Jane Somers, Julia Abbey,
Myra Peters, Etta Spring.

Miss Ashton smiled as she read the note. Repentance by the wholesale she had never found very reliable; and in this instance she would have had much more confidence if the girls had come to her, and made a full confession, without waiting to be found out.

It was not until after two sleepless nights that she came to the conclusion to give them further trial; and when she called them to her room, one by one, and had a long and faithful talk with them, sending them from her tenderly penitent, she felt sure her course had been a right one. 135

Then she made a short speech to the school, went over briefly what had happened, not in the least sparing the impropriety of the stolen ride, but, on account of the repentance and promises from the girls concerned, she had decided not to expel them now, but to give them a chance to redeem the character they had lost. The school clapped her enthusiastically as she closed.