“Yes, that is her name,” Adele replied, then turning to Gertrude she added, “You tell what Madame Deriby wishes us to do.”
“Yesterday I was in the office making my weekly report,” the older girl began, “when Madame Deriby said, ‘Gertrude, I am much troubled about our new pupil Katrina. She has been brought up by a wealthy and idolizing mother who has gratified her every wish. Realizing, perhaps too late, that she was spoiling her daughter, that mother has sent her to us, but unfortunately she is discontented and wishes to return to her home. You girls from Sunnyside have such pleasant times, I wish you would confer together and plan some way, if you can, to make Katrina happier.’”
“That will be a hard task,” Peggy Pierce said. “She is in one of my classes and when Miss Sharpleigh tried to insist upon Katrina’s reciting, she stamped her foot and replied angrily that she had never been made to do anything against her will, and that she most certainly would not recite unless she wanted to.”
“Poor little wild thing, she seems almost untamable,” Evelyn Dartmoor said pityingly. “Adele, have you and Gertrude thought of a plan?”
“If the rest of you agree, I had thought it might be well to select one of us to call upon Katrina in her room this morning and perhaps invite her to join us this afternoon in some merry-making. Madame Deriby would grant us permission to do whatever we would wish.”
“Oh-h! Don’t choose me!” Betty Burd begged. “I said good-morning real pleasant-like to Katrina only yesterday and she tossed her head and walked past in the rudest manner.”
“When I was a little girl,” Doris Drexel began, “we used to say a rhyme and point at each child in the ring to see who would be it. That would be a good way to select the one who is to call upon Katrina.”
“You repeat the rhyme then,” Gertrude suggested, and so Doris began,—
“Rosies, posies, violets so blue,
Somebody must be it
And that somebody is you.”
“Poor Carol is the victim!” Betty Burd said sympathetically.