"Wilkie Collins - I Say No" - читать интересную книгу автора (Collins Wilkie)

I Say No,
BOOK THE FIRST--AT SCHOOL.
CHAPTER I.
THE SMUGGLED SUPPER.
Outside the bedroom the night was black and still.
The small rain fell too softly to be heard in the garden; not a leaf stirred in
the airless calm; the watch-dog was asleep, the cats were indoors; far or near,
under the murky heaven, not a sound was stirring.
Inside the bedroom the night was black and still.
Miss Ladd knew her business as a schoolmistress too well to allow night-lights;
and Miss Ladd's young ladies were supposed to be fast asleep, in accordance with
the rules of the house. Only at intervals the silence was faintly disturbed,
when the restless turning of one of the girls in her bed betrayed itself by a
gentle rustling between the sheets. In the long intervals of stillness, not even
the softly audible breathing of young creatures asleep was to be heard.
The first sound that told of life and movement revealed the mechanical movement
of the clock. Speaking from the lower regions, the tongue of Father Time told
the hour before midnight.
A soft voice rose wearily near the door of the room. It counted the strokes of
the clock--and reminded one of the girls of the lapse of time.
"Emily! eleven o'clock."
There was no reply. After an interval the weary voice tried again, in louder
tones:
"Emily!"
A girl, whose bed was at the inner end of the room, sighed under the heavy heat
of the night--and said, in peremptory tones, "Is that Cecilia?"
"Yes."
"What do you want?"
"I'm getting hungry, Emily. Is the new girl asleep?"
The new girl answered promptly and spitefully, "No, she isn't."
Having a private object of their own in view, the five wise virgins of Miss
Ladd's first class had waited an hour, in wakeful anticipation of the falling
asleep of the stranger--and it had ended in this way! A ripple of laughter ran
round the room. The new girl, mortified and offended, entered her protest in
plain words.
"You are treating me shamefully! You all distrust me, because I am a stranger."
"Say we don't understand you," Emily answered, speaking for her schoolfellows;
"and you will be nearer the truth."
"Who expected you to understand me, when I only came here to-day? I have told
you already my name is Francine de Sor. If want to know more, I'm nineteen years
old, and I come from the West Indies."
Emily still took the lead. "Why do you come here?" she asked. "Who ever heard of
a girl joining a new school just before the holidays? You are nineteen years
old, are you? I'm a year younger than you--and I have finished my education. The
next big girl in the room is a year younger than me--and she has finished her
education. What can you possibly have left to learn at your age?"
"Everything!" cried the stranger from the West Indies, with an outburst of
tears. "I'm a poor ignorant creature. Your education ought to have taught you to
pity me instead of making fun of me. I hate you all. For shame, for shame!"
Some of the girls laughed. One of them--the hungry girl who had counted the