"Ah, but it is the dearest land in all the world," said Kitty.
"I am sure it is to you; but say no more now. I will speak to Miss
Worrick; she will expect you to do what I have desired to-morrow."
CHAPTER X.
PADDY WHEEL-ABOUT.
The next day there was a whisper through the school that Kitty Malone was about to do public penance. She had already made more or less sensation in that part of the school where she worked. In her own class the girls, as has already been stated, adored her; but the other girls also looked at her with interest. They admired her dress, her free, careless gait, her upright, erect figure, and the bright, happy glance in her eyes. They all thought her charming, and the expression of her face was often so comical, the shrug of her shoulders so ludicrous, that at a glance she set the girls tittering.
On this special occasion she sat down between her favorite Mary Davies and Agnes Moore, and whispered to the former:
"Ah, then, darling, it is not your place I'll be taking to-day; sure my head is bothered entirely. But I have got all kinds of nice things about me. Do you know that I sat up late last night putting a pocket in the left side of my dress as well as the right, so now the girl on each side of me can have as many chocolates as she has a fancy for? You dive in your hand whenever you feel the least bit inclined for a sweetie, Agnes; and you do the same, Mary Davies; and, Mary, you might pass one on now and then to that poor, little, thin Katie Trafford at the other end of the class."
It was certainly impossible for a girl like Kitty Malone not to be popular; and the other girls valued her, and thought themselves highly privileged to be in the same class with her, dunce as she was.
Kitty had learned her lessons a little better, but the thought of the public confessions which she was about to make rested heavy on her soul. It made her restless; and her lessons, although they had been better prepared, gained her no more marks than on the previous day.
"I wonder how I ought to do it," she whispered more than once to Agnes
Moore.