"Oh, I'm not in it. She's a girl and it's all right for her, and I can get along with any name. I told Aunt Hester I'd rather keep to Beatty. But I'd just like to see," he spoke up in a loud voice. "I'd just like to see anybody, boy or girl, say that Ruth hasn't a right to be called Brackenbury; I'll make it hot for 'em."
The girls shrank back and the boys hastened to assure Billy that no one doubted his word. Billy had made good use of his fists for too many years for his fighting qualities to be despised by his schoolmates.
"Come," said Lucia, putting her arm around Ruth, "let's go back and finish our lunch. I've got some nice little spice cakes in my basket. I made the cook put two in for you."
She glanced over her shoulder at Nora as she said this, for there had been a time when she and Lucia had eaten lunch together, but, since her Birthday Party, Lucia had chosen to ignore Nora and had invited Ruth to share the enticing contents of her lunch basket.
Every one knew that Lucia Field brought nicer lunches than any one else, and Nora felt herself distinctly snubbed. A great anger against Ruth arose in her heart. Ruth, whom she despised as an interloper and of whom she was wildly jealous, to be preferred before her was too much, and she determined that if there was any way to annoy her that the chance of doing so should not be lost.
Not long after this, her chance came, for on Friday afternoons the little girls brought their dolls to school at the request of the teacher who gave sewing lessons upon that day, and who had cut out and put into the hands of each a petticoat to hem, gather and sew on a band.
Ruth had learned to sew very nicely under Miss Hester's instructions and made so neat a hem as to call forth the teacher's praise.
"That is very well done," she said. "See, Nora, what neat little stitches Ruth has taken. Try to make yours look as well. I am afraid you will have to pick out half of what you have done. You are in too much of a hurry. If you want to sew neatly, you must take more time."
Nora pouted and gave her shoulders a twitch as the teacher turned away. She did not dare say anything but she gave Ruth so black and threatening a look as to make that young person wish she could change her seat, it being, unfortunately, next to Nora's. The best she could do, however, was to turn half way around toward Lucia who sat on the other side and who gave Ruth a pleased smile when Miss Mullins praised her.
Henrietta, though a less magnificent person than Lucia's Annabel Lee or Nora's Violetta was, nevertheless, quite as well dressed as her smiling neighbors who, staring at the maps on the wall, sat up stiffly on the desks in front of their several owners. Miss Hester, previous to the last Christmas, had given many a spare moment to the exquisite needlework which Henrietta's clothes displayed, and her dainty cambric underwear and pink frock were quite the admiration of Ruth's schoolfellows. To be sure, Lucia had excused the appearance of her doll by saying, "An only child as yours is, Ruth, must expect to dress better than the others. Now with my six, I find it hard to keep them all properly clothed and sometimes they even have to wear each other's clothes. I can't get enough clean things to go around."