The three children waited for each other.
“Did you speak to anyone, Maggie?” asked Elinor, imperatively.
“Oh, no,” replied Maggie, and looked straight ahead.
“Did you, Deborah?”
“I—I only said ‘thank you’ when a girl lent me a pencil.”
“There was no need.”
On the second day Elinor altered her order.
“You can speak to the other children,” she said. “Some of them are really very nice.”
But Elinor was a cure.
She was up to as many antics as the day was long, and formed a friendship with all the pupil-teachers of that school, keeping them for the most part screaming with laughter, or open-eyed with astonishment. For the particular mistress who taught her she formed a more reverent attachment.