"Isn't she a hateful old thing?" said Janie Mason, when they were outside of the door. "I wish I was big enough to strike back. I don't like school anyhow. Do you?"
"I—I don't know. I have never been before."
Several of the other girls swarmed around her with curious eyes.
"What a pretty frock!" began Betty Upham. "I suppose it's your Sunday best, with all that work."
"Betty said you were an Injun," said another. "I never saw an Injun who didn't have coarse, straight, black hair, and yours is lightish and curls. I'd so love to have curly hair."
"I'm not the kind of Indians you have here," she returned indignantly. "I was born right here in Salem. I've lived in Calcutta and in China, and been to Batavia, and ever so many places."
"Then you ain't an Injun at all! Betty, how could you?"
"Well, that's what some of them said. Maybe your mother was an Injun!" looking as if she had fixed the uncertain suspicion.
"No, she wasn't. She lived here part of the time. She was born in Boston."
They glanced at each other in a kind of upbraiding fashion.