"Well, all the other girls wear blue serge, but they never laughed. Miss Beach did. Perhaps she didn't mean me to see, but I did."
"Humph! Well?"
"Well, she invents new marches—in-and-out figures, you know—and she only does them once very quickly, and makes me lead off afterwards, and blames me if there's the least mistake. So I—I—just thought the next time she invented something new I'd see if I—I—couldn't make her do it slower. So—well, I collected parlor-matches for a week."
Mrs. Gano's quick movement said, "That's where the matches have gone."
"And I cut off their heads, and I gave some to—three of my friends, and I had a lot myself; and as we marched we threw 'em little by little under Miss Beach's ugly fat—I mean under her feet."
"I'm amazed at you—simply amazed!"
Mrs. Gano's eyebrows had shot up to the middle of her forehead. Val studied for the hundredth time the hairless bony arches above the piercing eyes, and the strange look of the patches of eyebrow sitting up on her forehead in that amazed fashion.
"Well, she did do that new march very slow, stopping and looking round surprised when the matches exploded, and at last she gave up marching altogether, and kind of exploded herself. She was angry, and red too—purple, all over her ugly podgy—over her face."
"I don't wonder she blushed for you. I am very much ashamed of you myself. It was the action of a ruffianly street-boy."
"She wasn't ashamed. She was just mad—I mean angry. She asked who had done it, and nobody said—"