“Goodness! Suffragette, Dot!” admonished her sister. “But—but I guess I don’t want to be one. They say Miss Grimsby is one and I’m sure I don’t want to be anything she is.”
“Is she very—very awful?” asked Dot, pityingly, yet with curiosity.
“She is awfully hard to get along with,” admitted Tess. “Sometimes Miss Pepperill was cross; but Miss Grimsby is mad all the time.”
“I—I wish they’d take Mabel Creamer into your room and let you take her place in mine,” Dot said, feeling that her enemy next door should be put under the eye of just such a stern teacher as Miss Grimsby.
“I s’pose she’ll make faces at me to-morrow,” pursued Dot, with a sigh. “And she can make awful faces, you know she can, Tessie.”
“Well, faces won’t ever hurt you,” the other sister said, philosophically.
“No-o,” rejoined Dot. “Not really, of course. But,” she confessed, “it makes you want to make faces, too. And I can’t wriggle my face all up like Mabel Creamer can!”
Now, clothed in a proper frock again, Barnabetta Scruggs made one at the dinner table. She was subdued and rather silent; but as always she was kind to the children, beside whom she sat; and she was really grateful now to Ruth.
Despite her rough exterior, Barnabetta was kind at heart. She had only been hiding her good qualities from Ruth and Agnes because she knew in her heart that she meant to injure them. Now that she had confessed her wrong doing, her hardness of manner and foolish pride were all melted down. And nobody could long resist the sweetness of Ruth and the jollity of Agnes.
The latter slipped away right after dinner, leaving the little girls listening to one of Barnabetta’s fairy stories—this time about The Horse That Made a House for the Birds.