Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/382

 all have our peculiarities of temperament and mind, our individual idosyncrasies, to distinguish us, and they are as marked as physical characteristics, and it happens to be mine that either a kindness or an injury is something to be paid in full as surely as a promissory note, if it is possible to do so.

"The debts I owe to you are for acts of wanton cruelty that one would have to look to Indians to find their counterpart, for deliberate insults that had not even the excuse of personal animus to justify them, but were due solely to the cowardice which likes to strike where it is safe — the eagerness to hurt, which seems to be the first instinct of small minds and natures. I have no taste to rehearse my grievances, but it is necessary, that you may quite understand why it is that I feel as I do towards you."

Somewhat in the tone of a person reciting a lesson she continued:

"I was a young girl when I first came among you — to the dance here, into this very room. I was ignorant, unsophisticated. I met you with my hand outstretched, yearning for your friendship ; and you would as well have struck me in my upturned face as do what you did.

"I had no mother, no woman friend to tell me that I was absurd in my paper flowers and the dress that I had made with my inexperienced fingers, and you could find no excuse for my ridiculous appearance, but enjoyed it openly.

"When you laughed in my face you had not yet inflicted pain enough to satisfy you — you had to turn the knife to see me quiver. And you did — mercilessly — relishing my humiliation when I had to leave.

"There was not one among you generous enough to make allowance for my youth and inexperince, and spare