There had been quite an accession to the school on the first of January. Mrs. Wilder had twenty-one pupils now. Mr. Lawrence came in to give them lessons in music, French, and penmanship. Kathie felt quite small, there were so many young ladies.
Several new families had moved into Brookside the preceding summer, and the Alstons' acquaintance had slowly widened among the better class. Kathie remembered how grand she had once considered Miss Jessie, and now she was really beyond that herself.
At twelve the girls had fifteen minutes' intermission. Sometimes they took a little run through the long covered walk, but oftener gathered around the stove or visited at one another's desks. There was always a vein of school-girlish gossip on dress, or amusements, or parties, or perhaps the books they were reading. This generally took in the circle just above Kathie, yet she used occasionally to listen, and it always brought a thought of Ada to her mind.
She sat puzzling over some French verbs one rainy day, while Emma brought out her cathedral that she was doing in India-ink. The talk from the group before them floated to their hearing. It was styles and trimming, velvet and laces that were "real," and gloves with two buttons.
Emma glanced up with an odd smile. Kathie, seeing it, smiled too.
"Let us take a turn in the walk," Emma said.
She was so much taller that she put her arm around Kathie with an odd, elder-sisterly feeling.
"They seem never to get tired of it," she began. "I wonder if there isn't something better to this life than the clothes one wears?"
"Yes," Kathie answered, in a slow, clear tone, though she shrank a little from giving her opinion. She had a shy desire to escape these small responsibilities, yet the consciousness of "bearing witness" always brought her back.
"What is it?"