A moment’s silence followed and then in a different voice, as though she were not speaking directly to the girl before her, Miss Winthrop went on. “I believe there are but three types of people in this world, be they men or women, that I cannot endure,—a coward, a quitter and a snob. Unfortunately I have discovered that there are among the girls here in my school a good many snobs. I guessed it before you ranch girls came to me and now that I have seen what you have been made to suffer, I am very sure. But, Olive, I want you to help me teach my girls the weakness, the ugliness, the foolishness of snobbery. And can you help me, if though not a snob, you are one or both of the other two things I have mentioned?”
“A coward and a quitter?” Olive repeated slowly, wondering at the older woman’s choice of these two words and yet knowing that no others could express her meaning so forcibly.
“But I would not be going away on my own account, but for the sake of Jean and Frieda,” she defended.
“I think not. You may just now be under that impression, but if you think things over, does it not come back at last to you? You feel you have endured the slights and coldness of your classmates without flinching and it has hurt. Yes, but not like the hurt that comes to you with the feeling that your presence in the school is reflecting on Frieda and Jean. They do not wish you to go away, Olive, they will be deeply sorry if you do and whatever harm you may think you have done them has already been done and can’t be undone. No, dear, if you go away from Primrose Hall now it is because of your own wounded feelings, because your pride which you hide way down inside you has been touched at last!”
Miss Winthrop said nothing more, but turned and looked away from her listener.
For Olive was trying now to face the issue squarely and needed no further influence from the outside. By and by she put her small hand on Miss Winthrop’s firm, large one. “I won’t go,” she replied. “I believe I have been thinking all this time about myself without knowing it, You made me think of Jack when you spoke of a coward and a quitter, for they are the kind of words she would have been apt to use.”
Miss Winthrop laughed. “Oh, I have been a girl in my day too, Olive, and I haven’t forgotten all I learned. Indeed, I believe I learned those two words and what they stood for from a boy friend of mine long years ago. Now I want to talk to you about yourself.” The woman leaned over, and putting her two fingers under Olive’s sharply pointed chin, she tilted her head back so that she could see in sharp outline every feature of the girl’s face.
“Olive, your friend Miss Drew told me on bringing you here to Primrose Hall what she and your friends knew of your curious story, of their finding you with an old Indian woman with whom you had apparently lived a great many years. I believe that the woman claimed you as her daughter, but though no one believed her, your Western friends have never made any investigation about your past, fearing that this Indian woman might again appear to claim you.”
“Yes,” the girl gratefully agreed.
“Well, Olive, I have seen a great deal of the world and very many people in it and since the idea that you are an Indian worries you so much, I want to assure you I do not believe for a moment you have a trace of Indian blood in you. Except that you have black hair and your skin is a little darker than Anglo-Saxon peoples, there is nothing about you to carry a remote suggestion of the Indian race. Why, dear, your features are exquisitely thin and fine, your eyes are large. The idea is too absurd! I wonder if you could tell me anything about yourself and if you would like me to try to find out something of your history. Perhaps I might know better how to go about it than your Western friends.”