She sat on the floor under her desk and tried to see the playground through the open door. Two small pinkly-clad figures dashed past the door, chased by a maiden in blue—all screaming and laughing.
"Nell Underwood!" ejaculated Betty gladly, and went back to her slate warmed and cheered.
She made her pencils work harder than before, kneeling upon the form in an excess of industry.
Even as she wrote the statement for the fortieth time, voices and laughter came from the playground—but a cold silence had come by the fiftieth.
At the sixtieth her little moist hand was cramped, and she had to stay to work her fingers rapidly. At the seventieth the tears were trickling down her cheeks, for she was only Elizabeth Bruce "detained for inattention," the schoolroom was only a schoolroom, and the forms were only forms—and empty. And that was the master down at the desk there, exercise books and slates around him and a pen behind his ear. For a space the tears splashed down hard and fast upon her slate and the sight of the big drops aroused her self-pity. The larger the splashes the larger her self-sorrow.
A sharp "Go on with your work, Elizabeth Bruce" waked her to the necessity of drying her eyes and slate and adjusting her pencils for again writing, "Elizabeth Bruce detained for inattention."
But at the eightieth time of writing it, she was no longer Elizabeth Bruce, the daughter of a moneyless author. Her name was now Geraldine Montgomery, and she was the adopted daughter of a millionaire. Her mother, she had decided, was a gipsy, and was even now hovering near at hand to steal back her beautifully dressed child.
By the time she had written the melancholy statement of Elizabeth Bruce's detention, her face had all its old smiling serenity again.
She rose, sighing thankfully, and collecting her slates, walked down soberly to the busy master at his desk.
"Let this be a lesson to you, Elizabeth," he said, running his eye down slate after slate. "Ten times each side, twenty times each slate, five slates—one hundred. More punishments are meted out to you than to any other child in the school. I shall find it necessary, if this state of things continues, to write to your father. Clean the slates and return them to their places—then go."