“How are you going to stop her?” Helen demanded. “Muzzle her?”
“That might not be a bad plan,” Ruth said, beginning to smile again. “Oh! but she did make me so angry!”
“I noticed that for once our mild Ruth quite lost her temper,” Helen said, delightedly giggling. “Did me good to hear you stand up to her.”
“I wonder who she is and what sort of girls she teaches—for of course she is a teacher,” said Ruth.
“In a reform school, I should think,” Helen said. “Her opinion of schoolgirls is something awful. It’s worse than Miss Brokaw’s.”
“Do you suppose that fifteen years of teaching can make any woman hate girls as she certainly does?” Ruth said reflectively. “There must be something really wrong with her—”
“There’s something wrong with her looks, that’s sure,” Helen agreed. “She is the dowdiest thing I ever saw.”
“Her way of dressing has nothing to do with it. It is the hateful temper she shows. I am afraid that poor woman has had a very hard time with her pupils.”
“There you go!” cried Helen. “Beginning to pity her! I thought you would not be sensible for long. Oh, Ruthie Fielding! you would find an excuse for a man’s murdering his wife and seven children.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Ruth said. “Of course, he would have to be insane to do it.”