“I don’t understand that, Agatha,” said Miss Wilson, pointing to the entry in the Recording Angel. “What does it mean?”
“I am unfairly treated,” said Agatha, with signs of agitation.
“In what way?”
“In every way. I am expected to be something more than mortal. Everyone else is encouraged to complain, and to be weak and silly. But I must have no feeling. I must be always in the right. Everyone else may be home-sick, or huffed, or in low spirits. I must have no nerves, and must keep others laughing all day long. Everyone else may sulk when a word of reproach is addressed to them, and may make the professors afraid to find fault with them. I have to bear with the insults of teachers who have less self-control than I, a girl of seventeen! and must coax them out of the difficulties they make for themselves by their own ill temper.”
“But, Agatha—”
“Oh, I know I am talking nonsense, Miss Wilson; but can you expect me to be always sensible—to be infallible?”
“Yes, Agatha; I do not think it is too much to expect you to be always sensible; and—”
“Then you have neither sense nor sympathy yourself,” said Agatha.
There was an awful pause. Neither could have told how long it lasted. Then Agatha, feeling that she must do or say something desperate, or else fly, made a distracted gesture and ran out of the room.
She rejoined her companions in the great hall of the mansion, where they were assembled after study for “recreation,” a noisy process which always set in spontaneously when the professors withdrew. She usually sat with her two favorite associates on a high window seat near the hearth. That place was now occupied by a little girl with flaxen hair, whom Agatha, regardless of moral force, lifted by the shoulders and deposited on the floor. Then she sat down and said: