But she couldn’t find it, and then she remembered laying it apart from the other books, the previous evening, and that it was thus left at home.
Too angry still with the teacher, whom she had always before liked, to tell him of the blunder, Tot turned to her desk-mate and broke another rule, by asking the loan of the French grammar which the latter was not using.
But the master’s eye was on her.
“Miss Sheldon, you were whispering! Take a misdemeanor!”
Tot did not answer, and choked down the rising sobs. A “misdemeanor” was the blackest of black marks, and never before had she received one.
Some of her friends among the pupils looked at her sympathizingly, but there were those who, always envious of the more studious and obedient of their number, showed their spiteful delight at her fall.
Of course she failed in her French, and lost her high place in the class, and finally, when a stinging and almost unjust rebuke came from the teacher, poor Tot could stand it no longer, and bursting into tears she hastily pulled her handkerchief from her pocket, when, with it, out flew the forgotten chestnut-shells all over the room!
Into the master’s very face and eyes they went, and he, half blinded, and not fully realizing how it happened, told Tot that she needn’t stay at school any longer unless she could behave better.
Out of temper from the beginning, angered beyond measure at what she considered injustice, and maddened still more by the shout of laughter that went up from the school at the episode of the nut-shells, Tot defiantly replied:
“Then I’ll go home, and never enter this hateful old place again as long as I live—never!”