s place and dropped it. With
a little cry she snatched at it and caught the strap on top. That pulled
from the fastening, the cover unrolled, the box fell away as far as it
could, two porcelain lids rattled on the floor, and the one sandwich
rolled like a cartwheel across the room. Elnora lifted a ghastly face.
For once no one laughed. She stood an instant staring.

"It seems to be my luck to be crucified at every point of the compass,"
she said at last. "First two days you thought I was a pauper, now you
will think I'm a fraud. All of you will believe I bought an expensive
box, and then was too poor to put anything but a restaurant sandwich in
it. You must stop till I prove to you that I'm not."

Elnora gathered up the lids, and kicked the sandwich into a corner.

"I had milk in that bottle, see! And custard in the cup. There was salad
in the little box, fried chicken in the large one, and nut sandwiches
in the tray. You can see the crumbs of all of them. A man set a dog on a
child who was so starved he was stealing apples. I talked with him, and
I thought I could bear hunger better, he was such a little boy, so I
gave him my lunch, and got the sandwich at the restaurant."

Elnora held out the box. The girls were laughing by that time. "You
goose," said one, "why didn't you give him the money, and save your
lunch?"

"He was such a little fellow, and he really was hungry," said Elnora.
"I often go without anything to eat at noon in the fields and woods, and
never think of it."

She closed the box and set it beside the lunches of other country
pupils. While her back was turned, into the room came the girl of her
encounter on the first day, walked to the rack, and with an exclamation
of approval took down Elnora's hat.

"Just the thing I have been wanting!" she said. "I never saw such
beautiful quills in all my life. They match my new broadcloth to
perfection. I've got to have that kind of quills for my hat. I never saw
the like! Whose is it, and where did it come from?"

No one said a word, for Elnora's question, the reply, and her answer,
had been repeated. Every one knew that the Limberlost girl had come out
ahead and Sadie Reed had not been amiable, when the little flourish had
been added to Elnora's name in the algebra class. Elnora's swift glance
was pathetic, but no one helped her. Sadie Reed glanced from the hat to
the faces around her and wondered.

"Why, this is the Freshman section, whose hat is it?"