"I won't have it," she said passionately. "I won't! It's too much to be borne. I won't put up with it another hour. Why should I be tormented all my life by these idiotic children? Look at my shawl,--how they have torn off half the fringe. It isn't fit to be worn. Look at my desk! I never open it without finding it littered with their trash. Do I want their old flannel penwipers? Do I want their stupid pincushions and needle-cases? Can I possibly want book-markers of perforated cardboard, with 'Julia' worked on them in blue sewing silk? I've had three this week. Do they think I don't know my own name, and that I have to be reminded of it by them? They have no business to go near my desk. They have no business to put anything in it. And I don't want their candy. And I don't want them to darn my stockings in hard lumps. I've never encouraged one of them in my life." (Alas! Julia, this was your undoing.) "I've never spoken to one of them. I did let her" (a scornful nod at me) "sharpen my crayons in drawing class, and I suppose this impertinence is the result. I suppose she thinks she is a favourite. Well, she isn't. And this is going a good deal too far. My number belongs to me personally, just as much as my name does. I won't have it paraded around the Second Cours. It stands for me in the school, it's mine, and she has no right to cut it on her horrid little hand." There was a moment's silence. Julia's breath was spent, and Madame Rayburn said nothing. She only looked at me. Now I possessed one peculiarity which had always to be reckoned with. Timid, easily abashed, and reduced to nothingness by a word that hurt, I was sure, if pushed too far, to stand at bay. Nor had nature left me altogether defenceless in a hard world. Julia's first glance had opened my eyes to the extravagance of my behaviour (Oh, that I had followed Elizabeth's counsel!), her first reproaches had overwhelmed me with shame. But the concentrated scorn with which she flung her taunts in my face, and that final word about my horrid hand, stiffened me into resistance. My anger matched her own. "All right," I said shortly; "I'll scratch it out." Madame Rayburn laughed softly. She had brought upon me this dire humiliation because she thought my folly merited the punishment; but she was not ill-pleased to find me undismayed. As for Julia, she bent her keen eyes on my face (the first time she had ever really looked at me), and something that was almost a smile softened the corners of her mouth. It was evident that the idea of scratching out what was already so deeply scratched in pleased her wayward fancy. When she spoke again, it was in a different voice, and though her words were unflattering, her manner was almost kind. "If you are not altogether a fool," she said, "and that sounds as if you were not, why do you behave like one?"