Janey tried to conceal her annoyance, and succeeded very well, until at the end of the meal Cordelia, in her headlong haste in leaving her seat, tipped over a glass of water upon her neighbor’s pretty blue dress.  This was too much, for Janey, and it was little wonder that she jumped up with an impatient exclamation, nor that she declared to Eva and Alice a little later that Cordelia ought to be ashamed of herself for being so careless, and that she did wish she didn’t have to sit next to her.

“I suppose, though, I shall have to sit there until the end of this term; but there’s one thing I’m not going to do any more,—­I’m not going to dance with her.  She doesn’t keep step, and she does dress so!” concluded Janey.

“Yes, she does dress dreadfully; and to think it’s her own fault.  She chooses her things herself,” said Eva.

“No!” exclaimed Janey.

“Yes, she does; her mother is ’way off somewhere, and Cordelia gets what she likes.”

“And she doesn’t know any better than to like such horrid things!  Sometimes she looks as if she’d lived with wild Indians!”

“That’s it; that’s it, I forgot!” shouted Eva.  “She has lived ’way off out in a Territory on an Indian reservation.  Her father is an army officer of some kind.”

“Young ladies, young ladies, look at your clocks!” suddenly called a voice outside the door.

“Why, goodness, it’s bedtime!” whispered Janey.  “Good-night, good-night.”

The next afternoon, when the Sunday classes were in session in the great hall, Janey, who was not in the same class with Eva and Alice, wondered as she looked across at them what they could be talking about that seemed so interesting.  This is what they were talking about:  Alice, in her clever exact way, had told Miss Vincent the whole of that little Saturday-night talk concerning the good Samaritan.  Miss Vincent smiled when Alice told of Eva’s odd simplicity of application; but as Alice went on and presented Eva’s perplexity and her plea for girls of her age,—­their lack of time and all that, and her own assurance to Eva that Miss Vincent did not mean what Eva fancied that she did,—­Miss Vincent, in a quick, decided, almost eager way, started forward and cried,—­

“Oh, but I did!  I did mean it.  Girls of your age can do—­oh, so much!  You are thinking of only one way of doing,—­helping the poor, visiting people in need.  I don’t think you can do much of that.  I think that is mostly for older people; but you live in a little world of your own,—­a girls’ world, where you can help or hurt one another every day and hour by what you do or say.  Oh, I know, I know, for I went through such suffering once,—­was so hurt when I might have been helped.  But let me tell you about it, and then you’ll see what I mean.  It was when I was between twelve and thirteen.  We had just come to Boston, and I was sent to a strange school.  I was very shy, but