ispered Betty.

"Silly!" whispered John.

"But--what _have_ I done?"

"Girl!" whispered John in scorn.

The trouble at Betty's heart stirred and hurt her. Was it not enough _to
be_ a girl, without being _called_ one--and in such a whisper. She sat
still, and, to save herself from tears, bit her lips and pressed them
together, and pinched her left arm with her right hand, as she sat there
with her arms folded behind her.

And John thought she didn't care!

He looked at her out of an eye-corner and added, "I'm done with you," as
a final stab.

Betty said, "Oh no, John," imploringly, and Miss Sharman caught her
whisper and saw her lips move, and said--

"Elizabeth Bruce--don't let me have to look at you again this morning.
You are very troublesome. Why can you not take a leaf out of your
brother's book, I wonder?"

The morning wore on, and tenses and moods gave place to drill. Then they
all went into the playground, and armed themselves with poles, and
formed into lines.

John, as the tallest and straightest-backed and sturdiest-limbed pupil
in the school, was always at the head of one line. While Nellie
Underwood and Betty Bruce, being of a height and age, headed a line
alternately.

It fell to Betty's lot to be head of a line to-day, and though she had
to "right wheel and march," with John for a partner, down the middle and
up again, and "left wheel and march" from John to meet again, and "right
wheel and march," and all of it over and over and over again, John's
eyes only ignored the little distressed face in the cotton bonnet, or
told her contemptuously that she was a "girl."

At eleven o'clock recess he was skirmishing with four smaller boys
(using only one hand to their eight) and Betty walked up and down under
the gum trees arm in arm with two other girls in sun-bonnets.

At dinner-time John scampered home to roast fowl and bread sauce, and
Betty and Cyril and Nancy carried their lunch bag to a shady corner and
ate bread and jam sandwiches with relish, finishing up with a banana
each.

It was not until afternoon school was well over that Betty found John in
any way approachable. He was skimming stones along the dusty road with
practised skill, and Betty, alone and hurrying, caught him up.

She artfully admired a stone that sped for a couple of hundred yards an
inch or so above the earth, without, to all seeming, ever touching it.
And John condescended to be pleased at her praise.

When she had