Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/191

Rh Josephine found her voice.

“You ‘ve got some new gloves,” she said.

“Yes; my Aunt Bessie sent them.”

“Are n’t they pretty!”

“I think so, and they ‘re lots nicer than mittens. I’m not going to wear my mittens again.”

Josephine looked down at her own chubby hands. Her mittens were red this winter, with a red-and-green fringe around the wrists. Only that morning she had admired them. Now they looked fat and clumsy and altogether unattractive; but she was n't going to admit that to any one else.

“I like mittens best,” she said stoutly,—“for school, anyway,” she added, and gave Clarabel more of the sidewalk.

“My Aunt Bessie said specially that these were to wear to school.” And Clarabel walked nearer the fence.

Josephine was hard put to it—Clarabel’s manner had become so superior.

“I don’t think your Aunt Bessie knows everything, even if she does teach school in a big city. My mother says she ’s too young to—”

What she was too young to do was not allowed to be explained; for Clarabel, with a color in her face that rivaled Josephine’s mittens, had faced her.

“My Aunt Bessie ’s lovely, and I won't listen to another word against her, not another one—so there!”

Then she turned, with a queer feeling in her throat, and ran down the street to catch up with another little girl who was on ahead,

Josephine swung her books and walked as if she did n’t care.

Clarabel overtook the little girl, who was all smiling appreciation of the new gloves, and was overtaken by other little girls who added themselves to the admiring group. But somehow her triumphal progress was strangely unsatisfactory; the glory was dimmed.

At recess, Josephine paired off with Milly Smith, who stood first in geography and wore two curly feathers in her hat. Clarabel shared her cookies with Minnie Cater, because it did n’t matter who helped eat them if it was n’t Josephine. Neither spoke to the other, and at noontime they walked home on different sides of the street.

Perhaps that was why in the afternoon Clarabel lost her place in the reader and failed on so many examples in arithmetic that she was told she must stay after school.

Usually there would have been several to keep her company, but on this day there was no one else, even Angelina Maybelle Remington had got through without disaster,—and Clarabel, wistful-eyed, saw the other girls file out.

At another time Josephine would have stayed; she always did when Clarabel had to, as Clarabel did when she was in like need. But to-night she filed out with the rest, and Clarabel, with a sense of desertion, bent over her problems of men and hay to mow, men and potatoes to dig, men and miles of railroad to build.

The noise of scurrying feet grew fainter, the sound of children’s yoices died away. The