When mental arithmetic and English classes had head and foot, Laura and Mary made it a point not to know answers of questions that came to them. So they kept together at the foot of the class, side by side. Miss Allen never said a word to them or to anybody else, but she understood. Then the classes stopped having head and foot. But she let them sit side by side. Even their desks were together.
Mary was always ready to laugh at a joke. Laura couldn’t even see one a mile off. That was how the trouble started and how little Betty Peters started to play peacemaker. Everybody called Betty Peters “Buttinski” because she was always as interested in other people’s affairs as she was in her own—perhaps a little too much interested. She would interrupt conversations and ask “What’re you talking about?” Some of the girls resented it.
It was in beginning German that Betty Peters sat next to Mary. Laura took French and wasn’t in the class at all. She did not know one word of German from another. It used to be one of Mary’s jokes to pretend that she could speak fluently so she would rattle off a long string of vocabulary with conversational intonations to make Laura believe she knew a great deal. Of course, Laura only half believed, though she didn’t understand the joke. Sometimes she really thought that it was a German conversation and she didn’t like to have Mary talk German to her because she did not study it and couldn’t understand. Betty Peters always helped Mary. She used to enjoy the fun.
But one day, it ceased to be fun. Laura always was a little jealous of Betty Peters. She used to wait at the door of the German room with Mary’s lunch-box because she herself had a study-hour just before recess and she could be there as soon as Mary’s class was dismissed. Then Mary would always call out to Betty Peters a long list of German words that meant nothing and Betty Peters would reply. On the memorable Friday when this stopped being amusing, Laura was there waiting when the two came out. Mary had been full of mischief that day. “Promise not to tell—I’m going to have a joke,” she whispered as the class filed out into the hall, Betty behind her.
Laura caught the words and saw Betty’s nod of promise. Then Mary launched out, “Die, der, der, die; das, des, dem, das,” she jabbered to Betty. Of course, everybody knows that this is feminine and neuter declension of the definite article, but Laura thought it was something confidential and jumped to the conclusion that it was a personal remark about her.
She turned upon her heel and walked straight off downstairs. Mary simply hooted with laughter and ran after her, but the harder she and Betty Peters laughed, the more indignant Laura grew. She put Mary’s lunch-box down upon a bench and left it and pushed Mary’s hand off her shoulder. Mary fell back to get the box. “You’ve done it!” declared Betty Peters.
“Nonsense!” replied Mary. “She ought to know I was just joking. Maybe she’s merely pretending to be angry.” But she wasn’t at all sure.
“I think she is really angry,” insisted Betty Peters.
“Well, what could she think I said?” inquired Mary. “I didn’t say anything at all.”
“Perhaps she thought you said something about her—”