The Principal looked at her attentively. “You’re a queer child,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” replied Dolly, thoughtfully. “But I’m trying to see what is my duty, and I can’t say anything till I find out.”
“At any rate, you’re an honest little girl, and I don’t believe you know anything that you really ought to tell, or you’d tell it.”
“Oh, thank you, sir. That’s just it. I don’t think I ought to, or I would.”
Dismissed from the room, Dolly returned to the class and told them the lesson would not be resumed that day, as Miss Partland had gone home ill. She looked reproachfully at the boys who had been ring-leaders in the “joke” and at Celia Ferris, too, who had also been a party to it.
But as there were many in the class who knew nothing about it, no word was said then and there, nor could there be until after school.
Then Dolly told what had happened. “And to think,” she concluded, “that Miss Partland was not ill at all, but so many remarks on her looking poorly, made her think she was,—and then—she was!”
“Pooh, nonsense!” said Lollie Henry; “you can’t make a lady ill by telling her she doesn’t look quite up to the mark.”
“Yes, you can,” declared Dolly. “It’s what they call auto-suggestion, or something. Just the same way, if you tell anybody they look well, why, then they get well. I’ve heard Mother talk about it.”
“Well, then,” said Tod Brown, “all we’ve got to do, is to go around to Miss Partland’s house and tell her she’s looking as blooming as a peach!”