I would not stir after that, and the schoolmistress, leaving her desk, came towards me, and looking darkly into my face, said:
"You wilful little vixen, do you think you can trifle with me? Come out, miss, this very moment."
I knew where that language came from, so I made no movement.
"Don't you hear? Or do you suppose that because you are pampered and spoiled by a foolish person at home, you can defy me?"
That reflection on my mother settled everything. I sat as rigid as a rock.
Then pale as a whitewashed wall, and with her thin lips tightly compressed, the schoolmistress took hold of me to drag me out of my seat, but with my little nervous fingers I clung to the desk in front of me, and as often as she tore one of my hands open the other fixed itself afresh.
"You minx! We'll see who's mistress here. . . . Will none of you big girls come and help me?"
With the utmost alacrity one big girl from a back bench came rushing to the schoolmistress' assistance. It was Nessy MacLeod, and together, after a fierce struggle, they tore me from my desk, like an ivy branch from a tree, and dragged me into the open space in front of the classes. By this time the schoolmistress' hands, and I think her neck were scratched, and from that cause also she was quivering with passion.
"Stand there, miss," she said, "and move from that spot at your peril."
My own fury was now spent, and in the dead silence which had fallen on the entire school, I was beginning to feel the shame of my ignominious position.