Berta is not really stupid, you know, quite the reverse indeed, but she is used to having the girls laugh at what she says. They laughed this time, and Miss Anglin did too, because she knew Berta was just drawing her out, so to speak. She went on to give other examples about the things we see while out walking or shopping or at a concert, and finally she drifted around to character-reading. She said a street-car was a splendid field for that. The next time one of us rode into town, she might try observing her fellow travelers. There might be a working-man in a corner, with a tin-bucket beside him. Maybe he would be wearing an old coat pinned with a safety-pin. By noting his eyes and the expression of his mouth the girl could judge whether he was just shiftless or untidy merely because his wife was too busy with the children to sew on buttons. She told a lot of interesting things about the difference between the man who holds his newspaper in one hand and the man who holds his in both. Some temperaments always lean their heads on their hands when they are weary, and others support their chins. A determined character sets her feet down firmly and decidedly at every step—though of course it needn’t be thumping—while a dependent chameleon kind of a woman minces along uncertainly. Why, sometimes just from the angle at which a person lifts his head to listen, you can tell if he has executive ability or not.
Before the bell rang at the end of the hour, we were awfully enthusiastic about reading character. The first thing Robbie Belle did was to stumble over the threshold.
“Oho!” jeered Berta, “you’re careless. That’s as easy as alpha, beta, gamma.”
She meant a, b, c, you understand, but she prefers to say it in Greek, being a sophomore.
“But she isn’t careless,” protested Lila, “she’s the most careful person I ever met. The sole of her shoe is split, and that is the reason she stumbled.”
“Why is it split?” demanded Berta in her most argumentative tone; “would a nobly careful and painstakingly fastidious person insist upon wearing a shoe with a split sole? No, no! Far from it. If she had stumbled because the threshold wasn’t there, or because she had forgotten it was there, the inference would be at fault. I should impute the defect to her mentality instead of to her character, alas! A stumble plus a split sole! Ah, Robbie Belle, I must put you in a daily theme.”
Robbie Belle looked alarmed. “Indeed, Berta, I’d rather not. I was going to trim it off neatly this morning, but I have lent my knife to Mary Winchester.”
“Ha! lent her your knife!” declaimed Berta sternly, “another clue! This must be investigated. Why did she borrow your knife?”
“To sharpen her pencil,” answered Robbie. “I made her take it.”
“Her pencil! Her pencil!” muttered Berta darkly, “why her pencil? Are there not pens? Mayhap, ’tis not her pencil. Alas, alas! Her also I thrust into a daily theme.”