“Girls, I shall write to my father to take me out of school!” exclaimed Lily, impetuously, as she rushed back to the room where the girls she had left were still sitting. “I will not stay to be so insulted!”
“Your insult did not last long,” said Katie, who was well accustomed to Lily’s extravagant manner of speech. “It’s only five minutes since you went off. We didn’t expect you back for an hour.”
“I couldn’t stay,” said Lily, gloomily; “but I suppose I must go right back. I asked Mrs. Abbott to excuse me while I ran for a handkerchief. I knew I had one in my pocket all the time, but I just had to come out and give vent to my indignation! Girls, Mary Ann Stubbs is just a little servant-girl! I know it by her looks and her words too. Why, what do you think she said when I mumbled out something about hoping she’d be very happy here? I wouldn’t have said one word to her after looking at her hands, but Mrs. Abbott’s eye was on me, and I had to make some kind of conversation.”
“Well, what did the girl say after you had done the polite?”
“‘Thank you, ma’am.’”
“O, how funny to call you ‘ma’am!’ Then what did you say?”
“I said, ‘Have you ever been at boarding-school before?’
“‘No, ma’am.’
“‘Should you like me to tell you some of the rules?’ I said.
“‘If you please, ma’am,’ she said, sticking out her elbows and twisting her fingers together as if she was wringing out a dishcloth. I say Mrs. Abbott has no business to ask us to associate with such a heathenish girl. Ugh! How she looks! Her dress is made of the coarsest cloth you ever saw, and it looks like a star-spangled banner mixed up with a rainbow, only there isn’t enough of it to make a banner, for it’s scant and short, short enough to give a plentiful view of her white stockings, and she’s got on clod-hoppers; I think they must be her brother’s shoes. She has no collar or cuffs, and her hair is done up like an old woman’s. Just think of my ‘mothering’ that great, horrid, vulgar girl! I wont, though!” She burst into a flood of angry tears as she made this declaration.