CHAPTER XVI.
MAUDE'S TROUBLES.
Poor little Maude had not been enjoying this first day at school. It had begun with tears, and she had just been having another burst of anger, and had thought that she could not possibly stay in such a school another hour. It was a new experience to the self-willed child to have to give up her own way, and submit to regulations that she did not like; and although she had managed the courtesy that had brought Ruby to grief, without the least trouble, as she had been to dancing-school, and could courtesy in the most approved French style, yet she found a great grievance waiting for her as soon as she reached her room.
Mrs. Boardman was waiting for her.
"Maude, I want to help you arrange your hair a little differently," she said. "Miss Chapman does not like the girls to wear their hair here at school as you wear yours, flying all over your shoulders. She does not think it neat, nor does she like little girls to pay so much attention to their appearance while they are at school. Of course she wants you to be neat, but not dressed up as if you were going to a party. She likes her scholars to wear their hair braided, and I will help you braid yours now, as I suppose you cannot do it alone if you are not used to it, and you have no room-mate yet to help you."
Maude looked at Mrs. Boardman in angry amazement.
If there was any one thing of which vain little Maude was prouder than another, it was of the crinkled, waving hair that fell below her shoulders. She rarely forgot it, and was always playing with a lock of it, or tipping her head over her shoulder, like a little peacock admiring his fine tail.
"I don't want to wear it braided," she exclaimed. "I like it this way. It would look like ugly little pig-tails if it was braided, and I won't have it that way. Oh, I want to go home. I don't like it here one single bit. I am sure my mamma would n't let me have my hair braided, like a little charity girl."
Mrs. Boardman was very patient with the spoiled child.