s 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.

"She's an ugly little thing," said the big girls among themselves as
they went edging gently and imperceptibly away towards a knot of big
boys, and then Abby Atkins's chance had come. She advanced with a
spring upon Ellen Brewster, and she pulled that blue ribbon off her
head so cruelly and fiercely that she pulled out some of the golden
hairs with it and threw it on the ground, and stamped on it. Then
she seized Ellen by the shoulders and proceeded to shake her for
wearing a blue ribbon when she herself wore a shoe-string, but she
reckoned without Ellen. One would as soon have expected to meet
fight in a little child angel as in this Ellen Brewster, but she did
not come of her ancestors for nothing.

Although she was so daintily built that she looked smaller, she was
in reality larger than the other girl, and as she straightened
hers