“Sure to be,” said Mildred, and hardly were the words out of her mouth when Alma herself came straight down in our direction, surrounded by a group of admiring girls, who were hanging on to her and laughing at everything she said.

My heart began to thump, and without knowing what I was doing I stopped dead short, while Mildred went on a pace or two ahead of me.

Then I noticed that Alma had stopped too, and that her great searching eyes were looking down at me.  In my nervousness, I tried to smile, but Alma continued to stare, and at length, in the tone of one who had accidentally turned up something with her toe that was little and ridiculous, she said: 

“Goodness, girls, what’s this?”

Then she burst into a fit of laughter, in which the other girls joined, and looking me up and down they all laughed together.

I knew what they were laughing at—­the clothes my mother had made for me and I had felt so proud of.  That burnt me like iron, and I think my lip must have dropped, but Alma showed no mercy.

“Dare say the little doll thinks herself pretty, though,” she said.  And then she passed on, and the girls with her, and as they went off they looked back over their shoulders and laughed again.

Never since has any human creature—­not even Alma herself—­made me suffer more than I suffered at that moment.  My throat felt tight, tears leapt to my eyes, disappointment, humiliation, and shame swept over me like a flood, and I stood squeezing my little handkerchief in my hand and feeling as if I could have died.

At the next moment Mildred stepped back to me, and putting her arm about my waist she said: 

“Never mind, Mary.  She’s a heartless thing.  Don’t have anything to do with her.”

But all the sunshine had gone out of the day for me now and I cried for hours.  I was still crying, silently but bitterly, when, at eight o’clock, we were saying the night prayers, and I saw Alma, who was in the opposite benches, whispering to one of the girls who sat next to her and then looking straight across at me.

And at nine o’clock when we went to bed I was crying more than ever, so that after the good-night-bell had been rung and the lights had been put down, Sister Angela, not knowing the cause of my sorrow, stepped up to my bed before going down stairs for her own studies, and whispered: 

“You mustn’t fret for home, Mary.  You will soon get used to it.”

But hardly had I been left alone, with the dull pain I could find no ease for, when somebody touched me on the shoulder, and, looking up, I saw a girl in her nightdress standing beside me.  It was Alma and she said: 

“Say, little girl, is your name O’Neill?”

Trembling with nervousness I answered that it was.

“Do you belong to the O’Neills of Ellan?”

Still trembling I told her that I did.

“My!” she said in quite another tone, and then I saw that by some means I had begun to look different in her eyes.