Both little girls had raised their voices as they contradicted one another, and as the tones of neither were very amicable by this time, they drew the attention of Miss Ashton.
"What is this, my little girls; what is the trouble?" she asked, coming up the stairs to them; then, seeing Belle's still distressed and tear-stained face she inquired, "Belle, darling, what is wrong?"
Nellie and Hattie were both rather abashed, especially the latter, who knew herself to be in the wrong; but Belle answered, "Hattie thinks Fanny Leroy said something, and Nellie thinks she didn't. I don't know," she added with a mournful shake of her head, "but somehow somebody must be rather 'deceitful and despicably wicked.'" Desperately, Belle meant, and she quoted her words in no spirit of irreverence, but because she thought them suited to the, to her, solemnity of the occasion.
Miss Ashton, too, feared that there was some deceitfulness, or at least exaggeration; and seeing that little Belle was in real trouble she questioned further, and Nellie told her what Hattie had said.
This was not the first time, by any means, that Miss Ashton had known mischief to arise from Hattie's thoughtless way, to call it by no worse name, of repeating things; and she reproved her pretty sharply, telling her that such speeches were not at all like her gentle, amiable cousin Fanny, and she could not believe her guilty of them; and even had she said them she, Hattie, had no right to repeat them and make needless sorrow and trouble for Belle. Then she soothed Belle and encouraged her to think that Fanny had not so wronged her; and after school she kept Hattie for a few moments, and spoke to her very seriously but kindly on her idle, foolish habit of telling tales with exaggeration and untruthfulness.
But Hattie, in repeating this, had said that "Miss Ashton kept her in and gave her an awful scolding just because she had said something that cry-baby Belle did not like, and Nellie went and told her and so put her in a scrape;" nor did she see that it had been her own blame in the first instance. And ever since she had been vexed with Nellie, and this added strength to her wish to have Gracie outstrip Nellie. It was not altogether this, let us do her justice, for she really loved Gracie better than any other child in the school, and was anxious to have her win for her own sake.
But we must go back to these two little girls as they sat together in Gracie's room.
"Yes, so she does," echoed Gracie; "and I suppose now Miss Ashton will take away my conduct marks, and being away to-day, I'll lose my place in all the classes too. Not that I could not get ahead of her again easily enough," she added contemptuously.
"But she can't have the best mat now," said Hattie.
"I don't see how I could do that," said Gracie. "It is her's, you know, Hattie, and I can't, really I can't."