Now Mrs. Benjamin took hold of the situation at once. She disapproved of the school girl "crush." She had a long talk with Isabelle and urged her to look after the younger girl, to help her forget her "claim" to invalidism, to influence her to normal activity. Isabelle accepted the responsibility and felt it deeply. She restrained herself from this and that because of Peggy. If she did things, Peggy would do them. So again, wise Mrs. Benjamin let her teach herself her first lessons in self-control.
"Isabelle," Mr. Benjamin said to her, when she had been at the school about two months, "I have a letter from thy father. He says thee does not write home."
"I've been busy," Isabelle said, frowning.
"But what does thee do on Sunday afternoons, when the other girls write home?"
"I want thee to write thy mother to-day, Isabelle," he said, sternly.
He told his wife of this conversation later.
"She writes volumes on Sunday," he said, "now what does she do with it?"
"She is one of the strangest children we've ever had, Adam," she answered.
"She is rather exhausting to me," he said.
"She's lived under abnormal conditions of some sort. I cannot seem to visualize her parents at all. She never speaks of them. She was so bitter and sullen when she came to us," Mrs. Benjamin mused. "I must try to get her confidence about her parents, she may be needing help."
"She came to thee just in time, my Phoebe."
"Yes, that's true. A little more and she would have been a bitter cynic at eighteen. Even now when she just begins to respond, like a frost-bitten plant, I am not sure of the blossom."
"She interests me deeply, and I'm growing very fond of her."
Later in the day when the other girls were out at play Mrs. Benjamin came upon Isabelle, pen in hand, gazing into the distance.
Mrs. Benjamin smiled. Here was all the clue she needed to the kind of parents Isabelle possessed.
"It may have been considered precocious, when thee was little, to call them so. But if I were in thy place, I would not do it now. It gives the wrong impression of thy manners. I think thee has very pretty manners," she added.
"You see, Max--my mother--doesn't really care where I am, or what I do, so long as I'm not in her way, so I don't know what to write her."