"Belle's real selfish," muttered Mabel; "and you shan't talk to me that way, Lily."
"God gave me my tongue for my own, and I keep it for just what words I choose to say," said Lily, losing both temper and grammar in her indignation; "and Belle's not selfish, but you; and most always when peoples is selfish themselves, they think other ones are that ain't. That's the kind that you're of, Mabel."
"Now don't let's quarrel," said Nellie Ransom, the prudent; "else Miss Ashton will come, and send us to our seats."
"But, Belle, dear," said Dora, "what's the reason you don't want Mabel to have a locket like yours?"
Belle told her story; and very naturally the sympathies of all her class-mates went with her, and Mabel was speedily made to see that she was thought to be altogether in the wrong, which did not tend to restore her to good humor.
"I shall take it to the locket-man for a pattern," she said angrily: "you see if I don't. I'll get it, ah-ha."
"No, you won't," said Lily. "Belle knows you. She'll take good enough care of it; and just you try to snatch it now."
What would follow if she did, Lily plainly expressed in the threatening shake of the head with which she accompanied her words.
Farther quarrelling or unkind threats were prevented by the entrance of Miss Ashton, who called her little class to order, and school was opened.