"Unless she asks any questions; but I do not think she will," said conscientious Bessie.
Miss Ashton came over to her with her eyes very suspiciously shining, and stooping down kissed Bessie, saying, "You blessed child!" while Maggie, always readily moved to tears or smiles, as befitted the occasion, put her arms about Bessie's neck, and grasping her teacher's skirts with the other hand and laying her head against her, began to cry softly.
But sentiment and Lily Norris could not long exist in the same atmosphere, and she now exclaimed:
"How I wish we were all boys just for ten minutes, so we could give three cheers and a tiger for Bessie and three more for Lena. I suppose it wouldn't do, would it, Miss Ashton?"
"Hardly for little girls," said Miss Ashton, although she herself looked very much as if she were ready to lead a round of applause.
"Well, we can clap, anyway," said Lily, "that's girly enough," and she forthwith set the example, which was speedily followed by the rest, Mr. Ashton himself joining in from his post at his niece's desk.
"I'd like to give thirty-three groans for Mrs. Neville," said Lily, in an undertone, "but I suppose we couldn't."
There was little doubt that the whole class were even better pleased to have the decision given in favor of Lena than they had been for Bessie, favorite though she was, so strongly had their sympathies been aroused for the former.
Imagine the surprise and delight of Lena when the news was brought to her by her jubilant little friends. She could hardly believe it, hardly believe that in spite of her enforced absence from school, in spite of her inability to hand in her compositions for so many weeks, she had been the one to receive this much coveted opportunity, and that she was not only free to bestow it upon her own little country-woman, but that her own credit would redound to that of Miss Ashton.
Of how Gladys received the gift—for her parents set aside all Harley's objections to her doing so—of how she became warm friends with nearly all of our "Cheeryble Sisters," and of what came of that may be read later on in "Maggie Bradford's Fair."