o, and she was always glancing
down to see if her skirt was spread out nicely when she sat on the
bench. Her sister Matilda had just as pretty gowns, but she was not
pretty herself. However, she was a better scholar, although she was a
year younger. That day she kept glancing across Comfort at her
sister, and her black eyes twinkled angrily. Rosy sometimes sat with
her left hand pressed affectedly against her pink cheek, with the
ring-finger bent slightly outward; and then she held up her
spelling-book before her with her left hand, and the same
ostentatious finger.

Finally Matilda lost her patience, and she whispered across Comfort
Pease. "You act like a ninny," said she to Rosy, with a fierce pucker
of her red lips and a twinkle of her black eyes.

Rosy looked at her, and the pink spread softly all over her face and
neck; but she still held her spelling-book high, and the middle
finger with the ring wiggled at the back of it.

"It ain't anything but brass, neither," whispered Matilda.

"It ain't," Rosy whispered back.

"Smell of it."

Rosy crooked her arm around her face and began to cry. However, she
cried quite easily, and everybody was accustomed to seeing her fair
head bent over the hollow of her arm several times a day, so she
created no excitement at all. Even the school-teacher simply glanced
at her and said nothing. The school-teacher was an elderly woman who
had taught school ever since she was sixteen. She was called very
strict, and the little girls were all afraid of her. She could ferule
a boy just as well as a man could. Her name was Miss Tabitha Hanks.
She did not like Rosy Stebbins very well, although she tried to be
impartial. Once at recess she pushed Charlotte Hutchins and Sarah
Allen, who were twisting Rosy's curls, away, and gathered them all up
herself in one hard hand. "I'd cut them all off if I were your
mother," said she, with a sharp little tug; but when Rosy rolled her
scared blue eyes up at her, she only laughed grimly and let go.

Now Miss Hanks just looked absently at Rosy weeping in the hollow of
her blue gingham arm, then went over to the blackboard and began
writing, in fair, large characters, "A rolling stone gathers no
moss," for the scholars to copy in their copy-books. The temptation
and the opportunity were too much for Comfort Pease. She nudged
Matilda Stebbins and whispered in her ear, although she knew that
whispering in school was wrong. "I've got a real gold ring,"