hole school I may help you to remember
to be more neat and orderly in the future. Come here!"

In much fear and trembling I approached her. She turned to the chair,
where (it would have been ludicrous if it had not all been so horribly
solemn) my comb, my boots, my slipper, my shoe-horn, and my bag of
cottons lay piled in a tragic little heap. She fastened them securely on
to my dress with safety-pins, till I looked like a gipsy pedlar or an
old clotheswoman, and bade me return to my place. Burning with
indignation I sat down. All my pride was wounded and the tears came
swimming into my eyes. I felt she had no right to treat me thus. There
were certain fair and recognized penalties for neglected duties at which
I should not have rebelled, but to be made a laughing-stock for the
whole school was out of all proportion to my offence. I could see the
amused smile with which Ernestine Salt nudged her companion, and knew
how unmercifully she would tease me afterwards, and the thought that I
must spend the entire morning with these absurd things dangling on my
back was almost more than my spirit could brook. I gulped back my tears
sufficiently to answer "present" when my name was called, and sat,
fighting with my face and trying not to feel that every girl in the room
was looking at me. There was a slight tug at my dress behind, and Cathy
cautiously thrust a tiny scrap of paper into my hand. I managed to read
it unobserved: "She's the hatefullest thing that ever was," it ran. "But
never mind; don't let her think you care." I scrunched up the paper and
held up my head. After all, why should I care? I had committed no very
desperate sin, and I knew that nearly everyone must be secretly in
sympathy with me. I would brave it out, and show Miss Percy that though
she might inflict any punishment she chose she was not able to crush my
spirit entirely. As to Ernestine Salt, I would defy her, sneer as she
might. It was unfortunate for me that my first lesson of the day should
be with Miss Percy. With the wretched boots and bobbins sticking into me
whenever I attempted to lean back in my seat, I felt in anything but a
docile or tractable frame of mind, and, though she certainly would not
have allowed it, I do not think she herself was in the best of tempers.
She corrected Janet sharply for stooping, reduced Millicent to the very
verge of tears, and even found fault with Cathy's beautifully neat and
tidy exercise. We were learning the geo