Ellen, from having so little acquaintance with boys, had had no very well-defined sentiments towards them, but now, on being set apart with her feminine element, and separated so definitely by the middle aisle of the school-room, she began to experience sensations both of shyness and exclusiveness.  She did not think the boys, in their coarse clothes, with their cropped heads, half as pretty as the girls.

The teacher coming down the aisle laid a caressing hand on Ellen’s curls, and the child looked up at her with that confidence which is exquisite flattery.

After she had passed, Ellen heard a subtle whisper somewhere at her back; it was half audible, but its meaning was entirely plain.  It signified utmost scorn and satirical contempt.  It was fine-pointed and far-reaching.  A number looked around.  It was as expressive as a whole sentence, and, being as concentrated, was fairly explosive with meaning.

“H’m, ain’t you pretty?  Ain’t you dreadful pretty, little dolly-pinky-rosy.  H’m, teacher’s partial.  Ain’t you pretty?  Ain’t you stuck up?  H’m.”

Ellen, not being used to the school vernacular, did not fairly apprehend all this, and least of all that it was directed towards herself.  She cast a startled look around, then turned to her book.  She leaned back in her seat and held her book before her face with both hands, and began to read, spelling out the words noiselessly.  All at once, she felt a fine prick on her head, and threw back one hand and turned quickly.  The little girl behind was engrossed in study, and all Ellen could see was the parting in her thick black hair, for her head was supported by her two hands, her elbows were resting on her desk, and she was whispering the boundaries of the State of Massachusetts.

Ellen turned back to her reading-book, and recommenced studying with the painful faithfulness of the new student; then came again that small, fine, exasperating prick, and she thrust her face around quickly to see that same faithfully intent little girl.

Ellen rubbed her head doubtfully, and tried to fix her attention again upon her book, but presently it came again; a prick so small and fine that it strained consciousness; an infinitesimal point of torture, and this time Ellen, turning with a swift flirt of her head, caught the culprit.  It was that faithful little girl, who held a black-headed belt-pin in her hand; she had been carefully separating one hair at a time from Ellen’s golden curls, and tweaking it out.

Ellen looked at her with a singular expression compounded of bewilderment, of injury, of resentment, of alarm, and of a readiness to accept it all as a somewhat peculiar advance towards good-fellowship and a merry understanding.  But the expression on that dark, somewhat grimy little face, looking out at her from a jungle of coarse, black locks, was fairly impish, almost malicious.  There was not merriment in it so much as jibing; instead of that soft regard and worshipful admiration which Ellen was accustomed to find in new eyes, there was resentful envy.