ort, and see the fashions! Straight from
Paris, and the very last thing!"

The speaker was Blanche Haight, a tall sophomore with bleached hair, and
eyes set too near together. She was considered a wit, and every time she
spoke the other girls giggled and screamed.

The person crouching on the floor was Lobelia Parkins. Her head was
pressed against the wall, her face hidden in her hands; misery and
terror were in every line of her poor little shrinking figure, but this
only gave added delight to her tormentors.

"Look, ladies, at the new sleeve!" cried Miss Haight, lifting the skinny
arm, from which the blue poplin sleeve hung in an awkward fashion. "Did
you ever see anything so exquisite? Look at the fringe, will you, and
the pattern? I'm going to get Miss Russell to put her up on exhibition,
so the whole school can have the benefit; it's a shame to keep it to
ourselves!"

"He! he! he!" went all the girls. "Blanche, you are too funny for
anything!"

"Where did your mother get it?" asked another; and this, as Peggy saw
with a shock, was pretty Rose Barclay. "Did the ragman bring it around,
or did she pick it up in the gutter? Say, Miss Parkins, I wish you'd
tell us, 'cause we all want to know."

"Yes, of course we want to know!" cried Miss Haight. "I'm going to write
this very night, to see if Mumma can't get me one like it. I never shall
be happy till I--"

That sentence never was finished. The speaker found her own arm seized
in a grip of iron, which forced her to drop the poor little arm in the
blue sleeve. She was forced back against the wall, and found herself
confronted by a pair of blue eyes blazing with righteous wrath.

"How dare you?" cried Peggy Montfort, in a voice that quivered with
rage. "You mean, cowardly brute, how dare you? Touch her again, and I'll
choke the words down your throat!"

Blanche Haight gasped for a moment; indeed, the whole group was cowed by
this sudden vision of strength and fury. But she recovered herself in a
moment.

"Well, indeed!" she said. "I should like to know what this means, Miss
Montfort? I should like to know who gave you authority to choke people,
and abuse them, and call them names?"

"You'll find out what it means!" said Peggy, waiving the second
question, and replying to the first. "If you touch that child again, or
so much as speak to her, I'll choke you."

"Girls, do you hear this?" cried Blanche Haight. "Are you going to
stand by, and let this girl ride