Robbie Belle lifted her head. “She hasn’t any brother, but it is true about her father. The doctor knows. She wonders how the story got out. It was a secret. Mary changed her name. She—she fought me.”
I heard Berta sigh again. It sounded loud. Lila sat staring straight in front of her with such a horrified expression on her white face that I shut my eyes quick.
When I opened them again, Miss Anglin stood in the doorway. I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life. But we did not tell her then about our classes in manners. We waited till one day in June when she asked us how we had managed to win Mary out of her shell.
As I look back now I cannot possibly understand how we succeeded. It was the most discouraging, hopeless, hardest work I ever stuck to. Over and over again Berta and I would have given up if it had not been for Lila. She said that she dared not fail. Of course Robbie Belle helped a lot in her steady, beautiful way. Martha did her best too, partly because she was so sorry about her share in the affair of the skates. In fact all the girls were perfectly lovely to Mary after the doctor had persuaded her not to throw everything up and run away to hide. By and by she realized that it was no use to refuse to be friends.
Indeed she is a dear girl when you get to know her real self. Her unfortunate manner—it was unfortunate, you know—had been a sort of armor to shield her sore pride. She had been afraid of letting anybody have a chance to snub her. That was the reason why she had seemed so offish and suspicious and indifferent and lawless and queer.
Do you know, I never heard Robbie Belle say a sharp thing except once. She said it that day when we were telling Miss Anglin about the classes. It was: “Whenever I want to say something mean about anybody, I think I shall call it a scientific analysis of character.”