"Yes, and you were very right," said Belle. "I told Aunt Margaret about you, and she said you were a wise, prudent little girl."
"I wouldn't be such a slow poke as Nellie, would you?" whispered Gracie to Lily, when Nellie had moved away a little.
"I s'pose I'd be as I was made, and I s'pose you'd be as you were made," said Lily, loftily, for her "scorn," as she would have called it, was always excited by Gracie's attempts to exalt herself above her companions and schoolmates, and it rather delighted her to put Gracie down.
This was difficult, however. Gracie's self-sufficiency was so great that only a very hard blow could overthrow it, even for a moment; and Lily was too much afraid of being considered an anti-politer to speak her mind as plainly as she might otherwise have done.
So Gracie was not at all rebuffed by the answer she received; and, so far from taking it as the reproof Lily intended it to be, only replied,—
"Yes, of course; but I'm very glad I was made smarter than Nellie. Why, sometimes I can learn three lessons while she is learning one, she is so slow and stupid!"
"She is not stupid," retorted Lily, forgetting her determination to "be courteous" in her indignation; and, indeed, Gracie often made it difficult for those about her to keep to this resolution. "She is not stupid, and if she is a little bit slow about learning, she always knows her lessons perfectly, and never misses; no, never. You know she's been head of the spelling class for most a year; you know it, Gracie, and Miss Ashton says she is one of her very best scholars. And the whole world knows"—Lily was waxing energetic in her defence, and more earnest to be emphatic than strictly according to facts—"the whole world knows that she writes the best compositions in our class since Maggie Bradford left."
"Pooh! I never thought Maggie's compositions were so very great," said Gracie.
"That shows you're no judge, and have very little common sense," said Lily severely. "I'm sure no one could write better poetry than that poem she wrote for me, and you might be proud if you could make such lovely verses. But I don't want to quarrel with you, Gracie, so we'd better not talk any more about it, 'cause I do feel like saying something not courteous to you."
Gracie in her turn would have liked to say something that was not very pleasant, but she felt that she could not well do so when Lily declared her intention of not quarrelling, and retired in such a graceful manner from the threatened dispute. Still she did feel that somehow Lily had had the best of it, and had rather taken her down, as she was apt to do when Gracie displayed her vanity and self-conceit.