it to get on me."

"Oh, Annette, what a girl you are; why did you notice her? What did she
say?"

"She said if there was, it must have got there since the teacher put
her on that seat, and it must have come from me."

"Well, Mary Joseph knows how to scratch as well as you do."

"Yes, she is a real scratch cat."

"And what are you, my dear; a pattern saint?"

"No," said Annette, as the ruefulness of her face relaxed into a smile,
"but that isn't all; when I went to eat my lunch, she said she wasn't
used to eating with niggers. Then I asked her if her mother didn't eat
with the pigs in the old country, and she said that she would rather eat
with them than to eat with me, and then she called me a nigger and I
called her a poor white mick."

"Oh, Annette, I am so sorry; I am afraid that trouble may come out of
this fuss, and then it is so wrong and unlady-like for you to be
quarrelling that way. Do you know how old you are?"

"I am almost fourteen years old."

"Where was the teacher all this time? Did she know anything about it?"

"No; she was out of the room part of the time, but I don't think she
likes colored people, because last week when Joe Smith was cutting up in
school, she made him get up and sit alongside of me to punish him."

"She should not have done so, but I don't suppose she thought for one
moment how it looked."

"I don't know, but when I told grandma about it, Mrs. Larkins was in the
room, and she said if she had done a child of hers so, she would have
gone there and sauced her head off; but grandma said that she would not
notice it; that the easiest way is the best."

"I think that your grandmother was right; but what did Joe say?"

He said that the teacher didn't spite him; that he would as lieve sit by
me as any girl in school, and that he liked girls."

"A little scamp."

"He says he likes girls because they are so jolly."

"But tell me all about Mary Joseph."

"Well, a mean old thing, she went and told her horrid old father, and
just as I was coming along he took hold of my arm and said he had heard
that I had called his daughter, Miss Mary Joseph, a poor white mick and
that if I did it again he would give me a good thrashing, and that for
two pins he would do it then."

"What next?"

"I guess I felt like Mrs. Larkins does when she says her Guinea gets up.
My Guinea was up but I was afraid to show it. Oh, but I do hate these
Irish. I don't like them for anything. Grandmother