Among her fellow pensionnaires she met with discomforting illuminations, which were fine discipline also, though if she herself had been a less intellectual creature they might have been embittering.  Without doubt Betty, even at twelve years, was intellectual.  Hers was the practical working intellect which begins duty at birth and does not lay down its tools because the sun sets.  The little and big girls who wrote their exercises at her side did not deliberately enlighten her, but she learned from them in vague ways that it was not New York which was the centre of the earth, but Paris, or Berlin, Madrid, London, or Rome.  Paris and London were perhaps more calmly positive of themselves than other capitals, and were a little inclined to smile at the lack of seriousness in other claims.  But one strange fact was more predominant than any other, and this was that New York was not counted as a civilised centre at all; it had no particular existence.  Nobody expressed this rudely; in fact, it did not acquire the form of actual statement at any time.  It was merely revealed by amiable and ingenuous unconsciousness of the circumstance that such a part of the world expected to be regarded or referred to at all.  Betty began early to realise that as her companions did not talk of Timbuctoo or Zanzibar, so they did not talk of New York.  Stockholm or Amsterdam seemed, despite their smallness, to be considered.  No one denied the presence of Zanzibar on the map, but as it conveyed nothing more than the impression of being a mere geographical fact, there was no reason why one should dwell on it in conversation.  Remembering all she had left behind, the crowded streets, the brilliant shop windows, the buzz of individual people, there were moments when Betty ground her strong little teeth.  She wanted to express all these things, to call out, to explain, and command recognition for them.  But her cleverness showed to her that argument or protestation would be useless.  She could not make such hearers understand.  There were girls whose interest in America was founded on their impression that magnificent Indian chieftains in blankets and feathers stalked about the streets of the towns, and that Betty’s own thick black hair had been handed down to her by some beautiful Minnehaha or Pocahontas.  When first she was approached by timid, tentative questionings revealing this point of view, Betty felt hot and answered with unamiable curtness.  No, there were no red Indians in New York.  There had been no red Indians in her family.  She had neither grandmothers nor aunts who were squaws, if they meant that.