It was a very cold morning, and Mrs. Pease had put her green shawl on Comfort over her coat; and the little girl looked very short and stout as she trudged along between the snow-ridges which bordered the path, and yet there was a forlorn air about her.
“I don't know as the child was fit to go to school to-day,” Mrs. Pease said, doubtfully.
“She didn't look very well, and she didn't eat much breakfast, either,” said Grandmother Atkins.
“She was always crazy after hot pancakes, too,” said her mother.
“Hadn't you better call her back, Em'ly?”
“No, I won't,” said Mrs. Pease, turning away from the window. “She's begun to go to school, and I'm not going to take her out unless I'm sure she ain't able to go.”
So Comfort Pease went on to school; and she had the gold ring in her pocket, which was tied around her waist with a string under her dress skirt, as was the fashion then. Comfort often felt of the pocket to be sure the ring was safe as she went along. It was bitterly cold; the snow creaked under her stout shoes. Besides the green shawl, her red tippet was wound twice around her neck and face; but her blue eyes peering over it were full of tears which the frosty wind forced into them, and her breath came short and quick. When she came in sight of the school-house she could see the straight column of smoke rising out of the chimney, it was so thin in the cold air. There were no scholars out in the yard, only a group coming down the road from the opposite direction. It was too cold to play out of doors before school, as usual.
Comfort pulled off her mittens, thrust her hand in her pocket dangling against her blue woolen petticoat, and drew out the gold ring.
Then she slipped it on over the third and fourth fingers of her left hand, put her mittens on again, and went on.
It was quite still in the school-house, although school had not begun, because Miss Tabitha Hanks had arrived. Her spare form, stiff and wide, and perpendicular as a board, showed above the desk. She wore a purple merino dress buttoned down the front with dark black buttons, and a great breastpin of twisted gold. Her hair was looped down over her ears in two folds like shiny drab satin. It scarcely looked like hair, the surface was so smooth and unbroken; and a great tortoise-shell comb topped it like a coronet.