‘It’s a shame,’ vowed Angela Wilkins, retiring sulkily. ‘I did ask first!’
‘Never mind,’ said Babs, soothingly; ‘I’m sure to do it again before long; I always do.’
Angela, however, found a more abiding consolation in Barbara’s temporary idleness.
‘You’re not doing anything for anybody, that’s certain!’ she threw back at her jeeringly. ‘Why, you’re the only idle person in the room! Call that being unselfish, indeed!’
Barbara hastened to clear herself of the reproach by picking up Mary Wells’s neatly made and spotless piece of white flannel. She was not sure what it was meant for, as it was not sewed together anywhere; and she had never been shown how to do the elaborate scallops that ornamented the edge of it. But a trifle like want of skill made very little difference to a seeker after self-sacrifice; and Babs recklessly plunged her needle into the beginning of the next scallop, and entangled the silk hopelessly. A cry from Mary Wells disturbed her well-meant efforts. The Canon, thought Mary, might say what he liked about people doing things for others, but was it quite fair when they did them all wrong?
‘It’s for my sister’s baby,’ she lamented, seizing her handiwork from the zealous Barbara; ‘and if I don’t finish it soon, the baby will be too big for head-flannels at all.’
‘But–I wanted to do something for you,’ protested Babs, in a disappointed tone.
‘You’ve stickied the needle, and left a great black finger-mark on it,’ wailed Mary Wells, making fresh discoveries, as she went on, of what Babs had done for her.
Miss Smythe came up to know what the fuss was about; and she promptly added her word to the condemnation of Barbara Berkeley.
‘What do you mean by touching anybody else’s work, you naughty little girl?’ she said sharply. ‘You are more trouble than anybody else in the school, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’