Half the scholars were on their feet, reaching and craning their necks.  The teacher turned on them, and there was no lack of sharpness in her tone.  “Sit down this moment, every one of you,” she called.  “Abby Atkins, if there is any more disturbance, I shall know what is at the root of the matter.  If I see you turning around again, Ellen, I shall insist upon knowing why.”  Then the teacher placed a caressing hand upon Ellen’s yellow head, and passed down the aisle to her desk.

Ellen had no more trouble during the session.  Abby Atkins was commendably quiet and studious, and when called out to recitation made the best one in her class.  She was really brilliant in a defiant, reluctant fashion.  However, though she did not again disturb Ellen’s curls, she glowered at her with furtive but unrelaxed hostility over her book.  Especially a blue ribbon which confined Ellen’s curls in a beautiful bow fired her eyes of animosity.  She looked hard at it, then she pulled her black braid over her shoulder and felt of the hard shoe-string knot, and frowned with an ugly frown of envy and bitterest injury, and asked herself the world-wide and world-old question as to the why of inequality, and, though it was based on such trivialities as blue ribbons and shoe-strings, it was none the less vital to her mind.  She would have loved, have gloried, to pull off that blue ribbon, put it on her own black braid, and tie up those yellow curls with her own shoe-string with a vicious yank of security.  But all the time it was not so much because she wanted the ribbon as because she did not wish to be slighted in the distribution of things.  Abby Atkins cared no more for personal ornament than a wild cat, but she wanted her just allotment of the booty of the world.  So at recess she watched her chance.  Ellen was surrounded by an admiring circle of big girls, gushing with affection.  “Oh, you dear little thing,” they said.  “Only look at her beautiful curls.  Give me a kiss, won’t you, darling?” Little reverent fingers twined Ellen’s golden curls, red apples were thrust forward for her to take bites, sticky morsels of candy were forced secretly into her hands.  Abby Atkins stood aloof.  “You mean little thing,” one of the big girls said suddenly, catching hold of her thin shoulder and shaking her—­“you mean little thing, I saw you.”

“So did I,” said another big girl, “and I was a good mind to tell on you.”

“Yes, you had better look out, and not plague that dear little thing,” said the other.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” chimed in still another big girl.  “Only look how pretty she is, the little darling—­the idea of your tormenting her.  You deserve a good, hard whipping, Abby Atkins.”

This big girl was herself a beauty and wore a fine and precise blue-ribbon bow, and Abby Atkins looked at her with a scowl of hatred.