"What happened last night to open your virtuous eyes?"
"I'm not going to say."
"Have any of the girls found out?"
Janet turned decidedly pale as she asked this question.
"I'm not going to say."
"You don't mean to hint to me, Bridget, that you have told the teachers about what I have done?"
"Of course I haven't, Janet. But I'll tell you what I did do. I went down last night when all the other girls—you among them—were sleeping the sleep of the just, and I tore a sheet out of each of these books; the sheet which you had so carefully prepared for me last night. That's why I had no English lessons, good, bad, or indifferent, to show this morning."
Janet stood quite silent for a moment or two; her delicately formed fingers beat an impatient tattoo on the top of Biddy's desk.
"You can please yourself, of course," she said, after a pause. "You can wade through your lessons as best you can, and sink to your proper position, you great big baby, in the lower school. You have shown a partiality for the little children. You are likely to see enough of them in future, for you will belong to them."
"They are dear little creatures, much nicer than any of the big girls, except Dolly. I'd rather be with them and do right than stay in the middle school, or even the upper, and feel as I did last night."