PLAIN BERNICE
The last stroke of the bell was dying away ere Bernice Dahl walked timidly across the schoolroom floor, and sat down in the nearest empty seat.
"O, my, my!" whispered Myrtle Fling across the aisle to her chum. "She is the plainest-looking girl I ever saw."
Elizabeth nodded her head very positively, and two or three others exchanged knowing glances. A moment later a little piece of paper fluttered down at Myrtle's feet from a desk top. On it was written: "She's so plain. She's Rocky Mountainy—all ridges and hubbles."
Meanwhile Bernice sat very still, her great black eyes fixed on the teacher's face.
Have you ever held a frightened bird in your hand, and felt its heart beat? That is the way Bernice's heart was going. She was a stranger. Her father had moved to this place from a distant town, and she had walked to school that morning with a pupil who lived on the same street, but who had fluttered away into a little bevy of children almost as soon as she had shown the new girl the cloak-room; and Bernice, naturally a bit diffident and sensitive, felt very much alone.
This feeling was heightened when the bell struck, and one by one the pupils filed past into the schoolroom, with only a rude stare or indifferent glance, quite as if she were some specter on exhibition. When the last one had passed her, she clasped and unclasped her hands nervously.
"It is because I am so homely!" she thought.
A month or more went by. Somehow Bernice and her schoolmates had not made so much progress in getting acquainted as one would have thought. The new girl was unobtrusive, attended strictly to her studies, and made few demands on those about her; yet it was true that there was among them at least an unacknowledged conspiracy to taboo her, or an understanding that she was to be ignored almost completely. This Bernice attributed to her looks. Ever since she could remember, she had been called "homely," "ugly," "plain," and similar epithets. Now, though she preserved a calm exterior, she could not help being unhappy because she was thus slighted.
One Monday morning a little flurry of excitement was visible among the pupils of the up-town grammar-school. Elizabeth Weston had announced a party to come off later in the week, and several of them had been invited.