Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/33

Rh only said very calmly, "Very well, Eugenia, then you may stand there."

And I did stand there. I took up my book and held it before my face for nearly a quarter of an hour; and I was so tired and angry because everybody was looking at me, and because Miss Perry couldn't see that I didn't want that poor stooping girl with the ugly dress and shoes in front of me. I was not thinking of giving in at all when Miss Perry said, right before everybody, "Adele, dear, would you like to come and share my desk on the platform for the rest of the year? Your little neighbor is not so well bred as I could wish."

That was too much. To sit for one day beside Miss Perry at her desk had always been a favor for which we all contended. And here was this new girl to sit there all the time. And such stooping shoulders, and such shoes; and, of course, she would not have any pretty frocks.

For days the rude boys shouted at me as soon as we were off the playground, "She won't. She won't." And I hated Adele. I tipped my nose up high when I passed her and swished my skirts at her.

Every Friday afternoon all the grades assembled in our room and a certain number appointed from each grade beforehand did something in the way of rhetoricals. Some read original compositions, others recited, others sang.

One Friday it was Adele's turn. She was to sing. Now everybody said that I, Eugenia Redfield, had music in me, so for a year past Uncle Max had had my voice in training with Madame Couronneau, and so when Adele, with her brush of black hair and limp dress and ugly shoes got up to sing I looked right at her and tittered as rudely as I knew how.

Oh, Adele! My heart was proud and vicious then and a thousand times has it bled since when I remember the hurt that came into your face; and the tears that filled your eyes; and how you shrank behind your chair; and how your first notes were weak and trembling from shame and pain.

As Adele, frightened and mortified at first, recovered herself, the room grew very quiet. I remember the pure little voice, the low, deep notes whose plaintive tenderness awed and shamed me.

When she had finished, all the older pupils and the teachers applauded and looked very wisely at each other. Child as I was, I was astonished. But when Adele sat down again, instead of looking pleased at the applause that the teachers themselves had led, she put her elbow on her desk and leaned her cheek on her hand and sobbed out loud. And I cried and cried too, for I knew it was all my fault; and dear Miss Perry went and shielded her from us with her large white hand over Adele's face; and Miss Perry wiped the tears from her own face, too, be-