“What is the matter with you, Emily?” said Miss Brownell suddenly and accusingly.
Emily was silent. She could not tell Miss Brownell what was the matter with her—especially when Miss Brownell used such a tone.
“When I ask one of my pupils a question, Emily, I am accustomed to having an answer. Why are you crying?”
There was another giggle from across the aisle. Emily lifted miserable eyes and in her extremity fell back on a phrase of her father’s.
“It is a matter that concerns only myself,” she said.
A red spot suddenly appeared in Miss Brownell’s sallow cheek. Her eyes gleamed with cold fire.
“You will remain in during recess as a punishment for your impertinence,” she said—but she left Emily alone the rest of the day.
Emily did not in the least mind staying in at recess, for, acutely sensitive to her environment as she was, she realized that, for some reason she could not fathom, the atmosphere of the school was antagonistic. The glances cast at her were not only curious but ill-natured. She did not want to go out to the playground with those girls. She did not want to go to school in Blair Water. But she would not cry any more. She sat erect and kept her eyes on her book. Suddenly a soft, malignant hiss came across the aisle.
“Miss Pridey—Miss Pridey!”
Emily looked across at the girl. Large, steady, purplish-grey eyes gazed into beady, twinkling, black ones—gazed unquailingly—with something in them that cowed and compelled. The black eyes wavered and fell, their owner covering her retreat with another giggle and toss of her short braid of hair.
“I can master her,” thought Emily, with a thrill of triumph.
But there is strength in numbers and at noon hour Emily found herself standing alone on the playground
