"Why, Ellie, what are you doing here? why don't you come and play?" exclaimed Kate Townley pushing aside the bushes. "We want you this minute."
"I'm learning my grammar," replied Ella, without looking up from her book, "so don't talk to me, please, for I'm in a great hurry, because it comes right away after recess, you know."
"Getting your lesson! getting it now, when it's almost time to say it! I wonder if this is the pattern good girl, that always learns her lessons just as soon as she gets home, and never allows herself a bit of play till she knows them perfectly!" said Sallie, in a mocking tone.
"I do almost always, Sallie, but I didn't last night, and so please go away, and let me learn it now."
"Oh ho, now I remember this pattern girl missed quite a number of questions in her geography, and if it had been that naughty girl Sallie Barnes, she would have been kept in. Ah, it's a fine thing to be a favourite, a very nice thing to be the teacher's pet!"
"It's no such thing," said Ella, angrily, "you know very well that Miss Layton doesn't pet me; she treats us all alike."
"You're right, Ellie, so she does, at least according to the way we behave," said Mary Young.
"What a shame of you to talk so, Sallie! you know Ellie didn't miss more than two, and Miss Layton doesn't keep us in for that much," said Kate.
"Well I say she missed three or four," said Sallie, "and I'll be bound she'll miss more than that in the grammar, for I happen to know that it's pretty hard, and she'll be kept after school for that; and then I hope Miss Layton will give her as good a whipping as she did once before."