"What of that? we'll keep the secret, and no one will ever know but us two," said Hattie. "Nellie has the other one, and that's good enough for her. She has no right to expect the most money from your grandmamma. Take a great deal of pains with this, Gracie, and make the work look just like Nellie's."
"But, I can't, I can't," said Gracie. "It seems to me almost like—stealing."
"Stealing!" repeated Hattie. "I'd like to know who has been stealing! I only changed the mats, and you have the best right to the nicest one. I was not going to have Nellie get every thing away from you. She just thinks she's going to make herself the head of the school and beat you in every thing."
Now as I have said, and as you will readily believe, there was more at the bottom of Hattie's desire to thwart Nellie than her wish to see Gracie stand first, although she was really very fond of the latter, and it was this.
It had so happened that Nellie's rather blunt truthfulness and clear-sighted honesty had more than once detected Hattie's want of straightforwardness, and even defeated some object she had in view, and for this Hattie bore her a grudge. She was particularly displeased with her at the present time because of a reprimand from Miss Ashton which she chose to consider she owed to Nellie.
Coming to school rather early one morning, a day or two since, Nellie found Belle Powers and Hattie there before her.
Belle sat upon the lower step of the upper flight of stairs, in a state of utter woe, with the saddest of little faces, and wiping the tears from her eyes. Hattie, grasping the banister with one hand, was swinging herself back and forth, saying, "I wouldn't care if I were you. 'Tis nothing to cry about;" but she looked ashamed and rather caught when she saw Nellie coming up the stairs.
"What is the matter, Belle?" asked Nellie, sitting down beside the school pet and darling, and putting her arm around her neck.
"Fanny Leroy said things about me," sobbed Belle.