"I don't care if you don't know your 'A.B., abs,'" cried one of the girls who had taken a prominent part in the dunce cap trick. "You make me awfully ashamed of myself for being so mean to you. Please forgive us all, Ann—that's a good girl."
Ann was awkward about accepting their apologies; and yet she was not naturally a bad-tempered girl. She was just different from them all—and felt the difference so keenly!
This sudden reversal of feeling, and their evident offer of friendliness, made her feel more awkward than ever. She remained very glum while at the picnic grounds.
But, as Ruth had said, the incident served to break the ice. Ann had gotten her start. Somebody beside the "primes" gave her "the glad hand and the smiling eye." Briarwood began to be a different sort of place for the ranch girl.
There were plenty of the juniors who looked down on her still; but she had "shown them" once that she could do something the ordinary eastern girl could not do and Ann was on the qui vive for another chance to "make good" along her own particular line.
She grew brighter and more self-possessed as the term advanced. Her lessons, too, she attacked with more assurance.
A few days after Thanksgiving Ruth received a letter in Aunt Alvirah's cramped hand-writing which assured her that Uncle Jabez would make no objection to her accepting the invitation to go to Cliff Island for the holidays.
"And I'll remind him of it in time so't he can send you a Christmas goldpiece, if the sperit so moves him," wrote Aunt Alvirah, in her old-fashioned way. "But do take care of yourself, my pretty, in the middle of that lake."
In telling Belle how happy she was to accept the invitation for the frolic, Ruth diffidently put forward her request that Mr. Tingley give Jerry Sheming a job.
"I am quite sure he is a good boy," she told Belle. "He has worked for my uncle, and Uncle Jabez praised him. Now, Uncle Jabez doesn't praise for nothing."