CHAPTER X.
A MEAN ACT.
Friday was composition day—that is, the compositions written during the week were then, after being corrected by Miss Blake, read aloud in the school.
The names of the writers were not given, so there was no embarrassment of that kind. Mrs. Abbott would simply take one from the pile and hand it to one of the girls to read aloud.
On the next Friday after that rainy Saturday four had been read, and Mrs. Abbott handed the fifth to Ellen Leigh, one of the younger girls, who was rather celebrated for her excellent reading. She opened the paper, which looked exactly like the others, and read:
“EUPHROSYNE, ONE OF THE GRACES.
“O, never, dear girls, let us roam as we will,
Shall we hear conversation like this!
Her ‘gimme’ and ‘haint yer’ and ‘tickled to kill’
Are treats we’d be sorry to miss.
“And nothing so graceful our eyes ever saw