ondescendingly.

Poor Jerry went into a flutter of joy over Isobel's apparent interest.
She ran to her room and took from her desk the sheets of paper upon
which were neatly written each step of her argument. She hoped Isobel
would think them good.

"May I look over them in school?" Isobel asked as she took them.

Jerry would have consented to anything! All through that day her heart
warmed at the thought of Isobel's friendliness. Like a small cloud
across the happiness of her life at the Westleys had been the
consciousness that Isobel disliked her; Gyp was her shadow, Tibby her
adoring slave, between her and Graham was the knowledge that they two
shared Pepper's loyalty, Mrs. Westley gave her exactly the same
mothering she gave her own girls, but Isobel, through all the weeks, had
maintained a covert indifference and coldness that hurt more than sharp
words. Now--Jerry told herself--Isobel must like her a little bit!

Jerry discovered, when Friday night came, that the Lincoln debates were
popular events in the school life. Every girl and boy of Lincoln
attended; on the platform the faculty made an imposing background for
the three judges. Six empty chairs were placed, three on each side, for
the debaters who were to come up upon the stage at the finish of the
violin solo that opened the program.

In the back of the room Cora Stanton, a Senior, stood with Jerry and the
boy who made up the affirmative side of the debate. Cora was prettily
dressed in blue taffeta, with a yellow rose carelessly fastened in her
belt. Her hair had been crimped and Jerry caught a whiff of perfume.
Then she glimpsed a trim little foot thrust out the better to show a
patent leather pump and a blue silk stocking. For the first time since
she had come to Highacres, Jerry grew conscious of her own appearance.
Over her, in a hot wave of mortification, swept the realization of what
a ridiculous figure she would present, walking up before everybody in
her brown poplin that she knew now was different from any other dress
she had seen at school. And Jerry could not get that shiny pump out of
her mind! Her own feet, in their sturdy black, square-toed shoes,
commenced to assume such elephantine proportions that, when the signal
came for the debaters to go forward, she could scarcely drag them along!

How much more weighty could her arguments be if she only had on a pretty
dress--like Cora Stanton's; if she could only sit there in her chair
smiling-