“I’ll do anything you tell me. I won’t mind; but that Thomasina—she’s hateful! I can’t stand being ordered about by a girl of my own age.”
“Ah–h!” cried Miss Everett, and sighed as at the recurrence of a well-known trouble. “Well, you know, Rhoda, you must get over that feeling, and conform to the rules of the school. Thomasina is a great help to me, and makes a capital ‘head girl.’ You see, dear, I have no time to look after these details. The girls think that they are busy, but long after they are asleep at night I am slaving away correcting exercises. Oh such piles of books! it makes me tired even to see them. I’ll do what I can for you, but you mustn’t expect too much; and after all, in a week or ten days you will have mastered the rules, and the difficulty will be over. You wouldn’t make a fuss for one week, would you? Stay! There is one thing I can tell you now, and that is that you won’t be allowed to wear those slippers any longer. I’ll give you an order, and you can go downstairs to the bureau and get a pair of school shoes like the other girls wear.”
Rhoda gasped with dismay.
“What! Those frightful things with square toes and no heels! Those awful tubs that Thomasina waddles about in!”
Miss Everett laughed gaily. She was only a girl herself, and she cast a quick glance up and down the corridor to see if any one were coming before she drew aside her skirt to exhibit her own flat feet.
“They are awful! I love pretty shoes, too; and the first time I wore these I—I cried! I was very home-sick, you see, and nervous and anxious about my work, and it seemed the last straw. Never mind! it’s only a little thing, and on Thursday you shall wear your very best pair and I’ll wear mine, and we’ll compare notes and see which is the prettier.”
To say that Rhoda adored her is to state the matter feebly. She could have knelt down in the passage and kissed the ugly little feet; she could have done homage before this young mistress as before a saint; when the light streamed out of a window and rested on her head, it seemed to take the form of a halo!
She went meekly downstairs, procured the shoes, and carried them into Dorothy’s cubicle, to display before the eyes of that horrified young woman.
“There! We’ve got to wear those, too! It’s the rule. Miss Everett told me, and gave me an order to get them. You had better ask her for one before Thomasina gets a chance.”
Dorothy looked at her solemnly, and measured the slipper against her own neat shoe; then she took off the latter and held the two side by side. One was arched and slim, the other flat and square; one had French heels and little sparkling buckles, the other was of dull leather, unrelieved by any trace of ornament.