"I don't see how you can bear to sit by her; she was always hateful to you;" this from Annie Waite.
"I'm going to ask Miss Mullins if Lucia and I can't change our seats," returned Ruth.
But this she did not have to do, for on Monday, to her relief, she found Nora established on the other side of the schoolroom in a seat by herself, this being Miss Mullins's punishment for what she realized was a spiteful and cruel act.
Ruth, escorted by a band of sympathizing comrades, bore her doll solemnly home that fateful afternoon and poured forth her pitiful tale in the ears of Miss Hester and Billy.
[CHAPTER V]
Billy and The Doll
MISS HESTER did her best to comfort the grieving Ruth, and, if the truth were told, felt nearly as badly as the child herself at the destruction of the doll which had belonged to her twin sister. She took the broken doll in her hands and looked at it tenderly.
"We had them exactly alike," she told Ruth, "only mine was dressed in blue and Henrietta's in pink; we always dressed them so to tell them apart. My father brought them to us once when he had been to New York, and we thought there never were dolls like them."
"What became of yours?" asked Ruth interested. "Did you break it?"
Miss Hester smiled a little wistfully. "No, I didn't break it. I gave it to some one. Some one who used to play with me when I was a little girl."