Ben was pretty scared, but she was plucky.
“I don’t mean beautiful in the common way,” she said kind of reprovingly, as if Miss Peck was very stupid not to see, “but beautiful for a picture. Mr. Angell says it’s a great mistake that the prettiest people make the prettiest pictures. He doesn’t care for them. It’s what’s in the face, he says.”
Which was all true—that Mr. Angell said it, I mean. Not that there is much sense in it, of course. But it worked.
“Oh!” said Miss Peck, looking quite different. “Ah, yes.” Then in a minute she said, “That is quite true. Certainly I will come, if Mr. Angell wants me,” and along she came.
Well, when he saw her he was much surprised, for I don’t think he expected a teacher.
“This—this is a great honor, I’m sure; thank you very much; we are greatly indebted to you,” he said, and anybody would think that he was perfectly crazy to have her and hadn’t dared to ask before, when really he was embarrassed to death.
So Miss Peck sat up on the platform and the advanced girls drew her, and it really did seem as if they did better than usual. They were quite excited at having a teacher, you see, and there were one or two drawings that looked quite a little like her. Mr. Angell noticed this, of course, and when the hour was up, he made a funny little bow and said to the class:
“I feel that we will all agree, young ladies, that we owe a vote of thanks to Miss Peck for a very successful morning. I have never known the drawing from the figure so successful, and I feel sure it is owing to the inspiration of the model—if I may say so.”
Then we all clapped our hands, and Miss Peck blushed, and Mr. Angell blushed, and it was quite exciting. But of course the real reason was that Miss Peck didn’t look like anybody in special: I mean she looked a little like everybody, and if you made her chin go back a little and drew enough hair, it looked like her—it couldn’t help it. You’d think anybody would: see that, wouldn’t you?
There was one drawing that was specially good—Elizabeth Van Horn’s—and Mr. Angell worked a good deal on it and touched it up here and there and complimented her about it and made a kind of cloudy background for it, and advised her to keep it and send it home to her family to show how well she was doing.
Well, of course he didn’t know, but that was about the very last thing in the world that E. Van Horn would do. He—Mr. Angell—is the perfect image of her Cousin Bates, that she simply hates and despises, but he will have a lot of money and her family think that maybe they will be engaged: which will never be, if she has to go into a convent. He is invited to her home for the vacations, and she dreads them. So of course she’d never do anything Mr. Angell said—it would be like pleasing Bates Van Horn. She hates to have him compliment her, and she threw the picture straight into the waste-basket and made a face at Mr. Angell behind his back. But Connie took it out, to keep it, she thought the background was so sweet. And then Ben said,
“Why don’t you send it to Miss Peck and make her think Mr. Angell sent it to her?”
Of course we saw in a moment what a good idea that was, and Connie wrote in the corner “W. P. A.” the way he signs it in his sketches, and rolled it up and laid it on her schoolroom desk. We never saw it again in this life, so I am sure she got it. In fact, we are sure for another reason—namely, that she said so. But not just then.
Now it was time to do something to Mr. Angell, for it was no use having Miss Peck in love with him unless he loved her back. And we couldn’t send him a picture because, in the first place, she couldn’t draw, and in the second place he’s so polite he’d thank her for it, and that would explain. Ben said she wouldn’t thank him, because she’d think he’d rather she wouldn’t; and that must have been the way, because she never did. But we had to do something. Ben couldn’t think of a thing and I don’t know whether we would ever have got any further at all if it hadn’t been for—who do you think? The Pie herself! Mr. Angell had left his umbrella, and came back for it next day, and as he was walking down the main walk the Pie walked along with him and Connie and Ben were hanging around keeping him in sight, hoping something would turn up.
