Claire's altered raiment produced an immense sensation among her classmates. Even several of the teachers showed signs of surprise. The new plainness of her attire brought out her unquestioned beauty, as gaudier and ill-blended vestments had before marred and obscured it. The back-drawn effect of her chestnut tresses, which were still streaked here and there with sunny threads, could not be doubted as charming even by the most prejudiced caviler. Her brow and temples were shown in their full purity of moulding, and the eyes beneath them gained poetic tenderness from this lovely exposure. She was not yet a girl clothed at all after the dainty manner of the girls about her, but she was at least no longer spoiled and hampered by unbecoming and vulgar garments. Everybody felt this promptly, and Claire herself soon recognized, by an intuition which always stood vassal to her singularly quick perceptions, that everybody had felt it. This was to be a memorable day with her. It may seem trivial to employ so august a term when dealing with one yet on the threshold of our truly vital episodes, but, after all, there is a reality about the chagrins and victories of childhood which is none the less potent while both exist because both must shortly drop into shadow before harsher pangs and warmer transports. Claire had resolved to be a kind of miniature heroine if occasion should ask her to play that part; and she had a conviction, based on very fair grounds of reasoning, that some such demand might be made of her before the school-exercises for that day should reach their end. Nor was she wrong. The recitations began, and were continued under various teachers until the twelve o'clock recess. Claire had suffered hitherto from the embarrassments of her surroundings, as regarded any frank assertion of what she knew and just how she knew it. But to-day she had conquered embarrassment; she was on her mettle, as the phrase goes; it was the main aim of her meditated plan to let herself be browbeaten in no particular, and the excitement born of this resolve had put her best faculties into nimble readiness.