'Skipped up from the Fourth Grade.'
'You did!' Hauteur was drowned in awe.
'You bet. It’s the second time I’ve skipped in this school, too.'
Theodora studied Charley with detached, incipient dislike. Charley must be very bright indeed to have skipped two classes. She herself, with all her brains, had never arrived at the pinnacle of skipping. And she had so much wanted to feel the importance of marching into chapel with the class next higher up, and of smiling back at her old mates with condescending tolerance. Theodora did not know that she might have skipped several times, but for the fact that her parents, who believed in the slow unfolding of her almost too brilliant mind, had begged to have her kept back.
All unconscious of this parental duplicity, Theodora was having some very uncomfortable minutes. If Charley Starr had skipped two classes, it looked as if the impossible were true—that there actually existed on the earth a person who was brighter than she. It could not be, and yet, and yet—Charley looked disturbingly intelligent. But there, of course he had not studied last year’s subjects in detail, so he could not possibly compete with her. And when she received the purple star, she would be entirely safe. Star—why, the new boy’s name was Star.
'Is your name spelled plain S-t-a-r?' she asked.
'S-t-a-double r,' replied Charley. 'I’m Charles Augustus Starr, Junior,' he said, in a bragging tone.
Theodora gave a shriek of delight, and punched the girl in front of her.
'Say, Laura, the new boy’s father is Coal-Cart Starr!' she cried.
Laura immediately shrieked, too, and so did all the other girls when they heard the news. Bewildered at so much noise, Miss Prawl rang the bell, and asked Theodora, who seemed to be a sort of cheer-leader, to look up the word 'whisper' in the large dictionary, and write the definition on the blackboard.