"
"Well?" said Elizabeth, as her cousin paused.
"She is all life and vivacity. I thought you said she was 'dummified.'"
"But she was. I never saw her like this before."
"Then something woke her. If any seemed ill at ease or lonely, she went to
them, and, behold, they chatted like magpies! I saw some of her schoolmates
look at her wonderingly, and at least one sneered, but I watched. She had
just one thought, and that was to make every one happy. You could have
spared any one of the girls better; in fact, any three of them."
Long after Helen had gone to sleep, Elizabeth lay thinking. "Jimmy
Flanders," she said, and counted off one finger; another followed, and then
another. After all, it was wonderful how many good deeds she could reckon
up, and all so quietly done. Strange she had never thought of them en masse
before. How could Bernice be gay among so many frowns and slights?
The next forenoon session of the grammar-school was well under way. Bernice
opened her history, and in it was a little slip of paper that she had used
as a book-mark since that first morning. An odd spirit seized her, and
almost before she knew it, she had gone up the aisle, and laid it on
Elizabeth's desk.
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