So Clarabel took the gloves to her room that night, and slept with them on the foot-board of her bed, where she could see them the first thing when she waked; and in the morning she put them on and started for school. One hand was held rigidly by her side, but the other was permitted to spread its fingers widely over the book she carried. Both were well in view if she looked down just a little. Passers-by might see; all Amity Street might see; best of all, Josephine might see! But Josephine, waiting at the corner, beheld and was impressed to the point of speechlessness. Whereupon Clarabel dropped her book, and had to pick it up with both hands. The furry wrists revealed themselves fully. Josephine found her voice. "You've got some new gloves," she said. "Yes; my Aunt Bessie sent them." "Aren'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 wasn't going to admit that to any one else. [Illustration: "CLARABEL DROPPED HER BOOK, AND HAD TO PICK IT UP WITH BOTH HANDS."] "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 didn'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 didn't matter who helped eat them if it wasn'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.