Anne of Windy Poplars - L. M. Montgomery [11]
For one thing, homework is never done by any of the Pringles or half-Pringles. And there is no use in appealing to the parents. They are suave, polite, evasive. I know all the pupils who are not Pringles like me, but the Pringle virus of disobedience is undermining the morale of the whole room. One morning I found my desk turned inside out and upside down. Nobody knew who did it, of course. And no one could or would tell who left on it another day the box out of which popped an artificial snake when I opened it. But every Pringle in the school screamed with laughter over my face. I suppose I did look wildly startled.
Jen Pringle comes late for school half the time, always with some perfectly watertight excuse, delivered politely, with an insolent tilt to her mouth. She passes notes in class under my very nose. I found a peeled onion in the pocket of my coat when I put it on today. I would love to lock that girl up on bread and water until she learned how to behave herself.
The worst thing to date was the caricature of myself I found on the blackboard one morning, done in white chalk with scarlet hair. Everybody denied doing it, Jen among the rest, but I knew Jen was the only pupil in the room who could draw like that. It was done well. My nose – which, as you know, has always been my one pride and joy – was humpbacked, and my mouth was the mouth of a vinegary spinster who had been teaching a school full of Pringles for thirty years. But it was me. I woke up at three o’clock that night and writhed over the recollection. Isn’t it queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked things? Just humiliating ones.
All sorts of things are being said. I am accused of ‘marking down’ Hattie Pringle’s examination papers just because she is a Pringle. I am said to laugh when the children make mistakes. (Well, I did laugh when Fred Pringle defined a centurion as ‘a man who had lived a hundred years’. I couldn’t help it.)
James Pringle is saying, ‘There is no discipline in the school, no discipline whatever.’ And a report is being circulated that I am a ‘foundling’.
I am beginning to encounter the Pringle antagonism in other quarters. Socially as well as educationally Summerside seems to be under the Pringle thumb. No wonder they are called the Royal Family. I wasn’t invited to Alice Pringle’s walking party last Friday. And when Mrs Frank Pringle got up a tea in aid of a church project (Rebecca Dew informs me that the ladies are going to ‘build’ the new spire!) I was the only girl in the Presbyterian Church who was not asked to take a table. I have heard that the minister’s wife, who is a newcomer in Summerside, suggested asking me to sing in the choir, and was informed that all the Pringles would drop out of it if she did. That would leave such a skeleton that the choir simply couldn’t carry on.
Of course, I’m not the only one of the staff who has trouble with pupils. When the other teachers send theirs up to me to be ‘disciplined’ – how I hate that word! – half of them are Pringles. But there is never any complaint made about them.
Two evenings ago I kept Jen in after school to do some work she had deliberately left undone. Ten minutes later the carriage from Maplehurst drew up before the schoolhouse and Miss Ellen was at the door, a beautifully dressed, sweetly smiling old lady, with elegant black-lace mitts and a fine hawk-like nose, looking as if she had just stepped out of an 1840 band-box. She was so sorry, but could she have Jen? She was going to visit friends in Lowvale, and had promised to take Jen. Jen went off triumphantly, and I realized afresh the forces arrayed against me.
In my pessimistic moods I think the Pringles are a compound of Sloanes and Pyes. But I know they’re not. I feel that I could like them if they were not my enemies. They are, for the most part, a frank, jolly, loyal set. I could even like Miss Ellen. I’ve never seen Miss Sarah. Miss