"But—what have I done?"
"Girl!" whispered John in scorn.
The trouble at Betty's heart stirred and hurt her. Was it not enough to be a girl, without being called one—and in such a whisper. She sat still, and, to save herself from tears, bit her lips and pressed them together, and pinched her left arm with her right hand, as she sat there with her arms folded behind her.
And John thought she didn't care!
He looked at her out of an eye-corner and added, "I'm done with you," as a final stab.
Betty said, "Oh no, John," imploringly, and Miss Sharman caught her whisper and saw her lips move, and said—
"Elizabeth Bruce—don't let me have to look at you again this morning. You are very troublesome. Why can you not take a leaf out of your brother's book, I wonder?"
The morning wore on, and tenses and moods gave place to drill. Then they all went into the playground, and armed themselves with poles, and formed into lines.
John, as the tallest and straightest-backed and sturdiest-limbed pupil in the school, was always at the head of one line. While Nellie Underwood and Betty Bruce, being of a height and age, headed a line alternately.
It fell to Betty's lot to be head of a line to-day, and though she had to "right wheel and march," with John for a partner, down the middle and up again, and "left wheel and march" from John to meet again, and "right wheel and march," and all of it over and over and over again, John's eyes only ignored the little distressed face in the cotton bonnet, or told her contemptuously that she was a "girl."