“Well, you can’t go there!” said Miss Sharpe, sharply, looking daggers at Pet. “You are to sit in my division—which is the lowest!”
“Yes, I see it is,” said Pet; “but you needn’t get so cross about it. I should think, when my papa pays for me, I could sit wherever I like. I’m sure this hot old room, without even a carpet on the floor, ain’t much of a place to sit in, anyway.”
Another universal laugh, louder than the first, followed this; and the sixty pairs of eyes flashed with wicked delight—for Miss Sharpe was the detestation of the school.
“Silence!” called the head monitor, sternly.
Miss Sharpe clutched Pet’s shoulder with no gentle hand, and jerked her into a seat with an angry scowl.
“You must keep silence, Miss Lawless,” she began, with asperity. “Young ladies are not allowed to talk in the class-room. You will have to sit wherever you are placed, and make no complaints. Such rude behavior is not allowed here. Hold your tongue, now, and read this.”
Hereupon she took from her table the “First Book of Lessons,” and put it into Pet’s hand, with another scowl, darker, if possible, than the first.
Pet took it, and holding it upside down for a while, seemed to be intently studying, thinking all the while that life in a school-room was not only as pleasant, but considerably pleasanter, than she had anticipated.
But for Pet Lawless to keep silent any length of time was simply a moral impossibility; so, finding the cross teacher’s lynx eyes turned for a moment the other way, she bent over toward her next neighbor, a little red-eyed, red-haired girl, about her own age, and whispered, in strict confidence, pointing to Miss Sharpe:
“Ain’t she a horrid cross old thing?”