Crowds were coming in now, and she, Barbara Hale, who had been chosen to head the girls’ work was being left alone, to her own resources and misery, and the women, and even the mayor, perhaps, would talk to her about all they had done, praise their work. How absurd!
She hoped her father wasn’t there. That would add to her humiliation. And even more than this, she hoped Miss Davis was nowhere about.
“The Italian boy who always tags after me,” she thought bitterly. “Yes, that’s it. Those girls won’t have anything to do with me or anyone else unless we keep away from——”
She couldn’t say the word that was already upon her lips. She couldn’t call the poor “scum.” That would have been beneath her. But in her anger she could not help blaming the girls for their narrowness.
Why could they not have stuck together and proved to Miss Davis that harmony was always reliable?
Her white face burned now and her eyes felt sightless, as she entered the house. How devastating anger can be? How it poisons, and how it hurts!
“Those snobs!” she was thinking. “Cutting me like that. They were glad of a chance, of course. As if I cared.”
But she did care, a lot. She was so indignant she could not direct her thoughts. She just couldn’t think straight.
Entering the room she immediately espied her father.
“Daddy!” she called out. “I’ve brought our heirloom. Come along while I give it to the chairman.”