But I don’t think that will make any difference to Aunt Jane.  It’s the principle of the thing.  It’s always the principle of the thing with Aunt Jane.  She’ll be very angry, I know.  Maybe she’ll send me home.  Oh, I hope she will!

Well, I shall tell her to-morrow, anyway.  Then—­we’ll see.

* * * * *

One day later.

And, dear, dear, what a day it has been!

I told her this morning.  She was very angry.  She said at first:  “Nonsense, Mary, don’t be impertinent.  Of course you’ll go to school!” and all that kind of talk.  But I kept my temper.  I did not act angry.  I was simply firm and dignified.  And when she saw I really meant what I said, and that I would not step my foot inside that schoolroom again—­that it was a matter of conscience with me—­that I did not think it was right for me to do it, she simply stared for a minute, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes and ears.  Then she gasped: 

“Mary, what do you mean by such talk to me?  Do you think I shall permit this sort of thing to go on for a moment?”

I thought then she was going to send me home.  Oh, I did so hope she was.  But she didn’t.  She sent me to my room.

“You will stay there until your father comes home this noon,” she said.  “This is a matter for him to settle.”

Father!  And I never even thought of her going to him with it.  She was always telling me never to bother Father with anything, and I knew she didn’t usually ask him anything about me.  She settled everything herself.  But this—­and the very thing I didn’t want her to ask him, too.  But of course I couldn’t help myself.  That’s the trouble.  Youth is so helpless in the clutches of old age!

Well, I went to my room.  Aunt Jane told me to meditate on my sins.  But I didn’t.  I meditated on other people’s sins. I didn’t have any to meditate on.  Was it a sin, pray, for me to stand up for my mother and refuse to associate with people who wouldn’t associate with me on account of her?  I guess not!

I meditated on Stella Mayhew and her mother, and on those silly, faithless girls that thought more of an ice-cream soda than they did of justice and right to their fellow schoolmate.  And I meditated on Aunt Jane and her never giving me so much as a single kiss since I came.  And I meditated on how much better Father liked stars and comets than he did his own daughter; and I meditated on what a cruel, heartless world this is, anyway, and what a pity it was that I, so fair and young, should have found it out so soon—­right on the bank, as it were, or where that brook and river meet.  And I wondered, if I died if anybody would care; and I thought how beautiful and pathetic I would look in my coffin with my lily-white hands folded on my breast.  And I hoped they ’d have the funeral in the daytime, because if it was at night-time Father’d be sure to have a star or something to keep him from coming.  And I wanted him to come.  I wanted him to feel bad; and I meditated on how bad he would feel—­when it was too late.