Bep felt the silence grow around her. She saw the whole school drop its mirth and its employments to watch this duel between Madigans.
"Why, you know very well, Kate Madigan—" she began hotly.
A sharp ring on the bell at the teacher's desk cut Bep's eloquence short. "If you have anything to say to me, little girl, you will address me as Miss Madigan."
The audacity of it struck Bep dumb. Call that slim girl Miss Madigan? She'd like to see herself!
"You will go home, Elizabeth," the substitute continued, unconcernedly making her way to the blackboard as though this life-and-death affair were a mere incident in her many duties, "and bring me back a written excuse for your tardiness."
Bep set her teeth. "You know I had to go an errand for Aunt Anne; you saw me yourself," she muttered.
"A written excuse, I said."
"I can't get any." Yet Bep rose. She felt the ground slipping from under her.
"Then I am sorry to say," remarked the substitute, firmly, "that I shall not be able to have you in my class to-day. Leave the room, Bessie.... Now, children, the first thing to do in subtraction—"
Bessie walked slowly up the aisle and toward the door. With the prospect of a double disciplining, at home and at school, too, she dared not rebel. Yet wrath smoldered within her. She came to where the substitute stood at the board, calmly explaining the process of "borrowing," and the resolution to regard her as an undeserving stranger was tempered by Bep's desire to inflict an intimate, personal insult.