"Oh, I don't mind," said Marcia Tyndal in a good natured voice, shrugging her fat shoulders as she spoke.
Then the girls trooped into school, prayers began, and immediately afterward they all assembled at their different classes.
Kitty was restless and nervous, she could not settle to her work. She was more distrait and inattentive even than usual. The younger girls, who delighted in her, and quite prided themselves on having her in their class, nudged her in vain.
"Kitty," whispered one little girl quite three years Kitty Malone's junior, "if you don't open your history book you won't have your lesson ready when Miss Worrick comes."
"Oh, I know all that stupid history," cried Kitty in a low voice. "Don't bother me, Annie, asthore. I can't be teased. I have got something in the back of my head."
"Something in the back of your head?" whispered Annie.
"Yes, yes; but hush, alanna! I can't let it out; it's bothering me entirely. There, if I must look at the stupid history, I must. What part are we doing, Mary Davies?"
"Oh, it's about Charles the First."
"Poor martyr! Shame to England to cut off his head!" Kitty bent over her book, but soon her erratic fancy had started off in another direction. She was sent to the bottom of the class when the history lesson came on, and was looked at with growing disfavor by Miss Worrick, a particularly painstaking and earnest young teacher.
"Really, Miss Malone, if this sort of thing goes on I must report you," she said. "It is pure inattention. If you wish to take any position in the school you must make up your mind that while in school you must work."