ashamed to show that I was.  So when the girls stared at me, as girls will, and giggled amongst themselves about anything, I thought they were staring in an unfriendly way and laughing at me, and I immediately straightened up and put on a stiff and what I tried to make an indifferent manner.  This only prejudiced them against me, and the unfriendliness I had fancied became very soon a reality, and I was snubbed or avoided in the most decided way.  I tried to bear this silently, to act as if I didn’t care for a while, but I became so lonely at length I thought I would try to conciliate them.  I dare say, however, my shy manner was still misunderstood, for I was not encouraged to go on.  What I suffered at this time I have never forgotten.  The girls were no worse than other girls, but they had started out on a wrong track, and gradually the whole flock of them, one led on by what another would say or do, were down upon me.  It was a sort of contagious excitement, and they didn’t stop to think it might be unjust or cruel.  Things went on from bad to worse, until at last I gave up trying to conciliate, and turned on them like a little wild-cat.  I forgot my timidity,—­forgot everything but my desire to be even with them, as I expressed it.  But it wasn’t an even conflict,—­thirty girls against one; and at length I did something dreadful.  I was going from the school-room to a recitation room with my ink-bottle; that I had been to have filled, when I met in the hall three of ‘my enemies,’ as I called them.  In trying to avoid them I ran against them.  They thought I did it purposely, and at once accused me of that, and other sins I happened to be innocent of, in a way that exasperated me.  I tried to go on, but they barred my progress; and then it was that I lost all control of myself, and in a sort of frantic fury flung the ink-bottle that I held straight before me.  I could never recall the details of anything after that.  I only remember the screams, the opening of doors, the teachers hastening up, a voice saying, ’No; only the dresses are injured; but she might have killed somebody!’ In the answers to their questions the teachers got at something of the truth, not all of it.  They were very much shocked at a state of things they had not even suspected; but my violence prejudiced them against me, as was natural, and they had little sympathy for me.  Of course I couldn’t remain at the school after that.  I was not expelled.  My father took me away, yet I always felt that I went in disgrace.”

“They were horrid girls,—­horrid!” cried Alice, vehemently.

“No; they were like any ordinary girls who don’t think.  But you see how different everything might have been if only one of them had thought to say a kind word to me; had seen that I might have been suffering, and”—­smiling down upon Eva—­“been a good Samaritan to me.”

“They were horrid, or they would have thought,” insisted Alice.  “I’m sure I don’t know any girls who would have been so stupid.”