But, alas! Gerty’s glib tongue and ready smiles had not won her the prizes which had fallen to poor little plain Ada Elizabeth’s share, and Gerty was out in the cold, so to speak, among the other scholars, while Ada Elizabeth, in an agony of shyness and confusion, stood on the edge of the daïs, first on one foot and then on the other, conscious that her mother’s eyes were upon her and that their expression was not an approving one, feeling, though she would hardly have been able to put it into words, that in cutting so sorry a figure she was making her poor mother’s trials more hard to bear than ever. Poor little plain child, she kept courtesying up and down like a mechanical doll, and saying, "Yes, ’m," and "No, ’m," at the wrong moments, and she altogether forgot that the fresh-coloured, buxom lady in the neat black gown and with only a bit of blue feather to relieve her black bonnet was not a "ma’am" at all, but a "my lady," who ought to have been addressed as such. At last, however, the ceremony, and the games and sports, and the big tea were all over, and Ada Elizabeth went home with her prizes to be a heroine no longer, for she soon, very soon, in the presence of Gerty’s prettiness and Gerty’s glib tongue and ready smiles, sank into the insignificance which had been her portion aforetime. She had not much encouragement to go on trying to be a credit to the family which she had so hardly tried by taking after her father, for nobody seemed to remember that she had been at the top of the tree at the great examination, or, if they did recall it, it was generally as an example of the schoolmistress’s "awkwardness" of disposition in having passed over the hare for the tortoise. Yet sometimes, when Gerty was extra hard upon Ada Elizabeth’s dulness, or Mrs. Dicki’son found the trial of her life more heavy to bear than usual, her father would look up from his dinner or his tea, as it might happen to be, and fix his slow gaze upon his eldest daughter’s vivacious countenance. "H’m! Our Ada Elizabeth’s too stupid to live, is she? Well, you’re like to know, Gerty; it was you won three first prizes last half, wasn’t it? A great credit to you, to say nought about the ’good conduct and regular attendance.’ Yes, you’re like to know all about it, you are." "Dear me, Gerty," Mrs. Dicki’son would as often as not chime in fretfully, having just wit enough to keep on the blind side of "Father," "eat your tea, and let our Ada Elizabeth alone, do; it isn’t pretty of you to be always calling her for something. Our Ada Elizabeth’s plain-looking, there’s no saying aught again’ it, but stupid she isn’t, and never was; and, as Father says, ’’andsome is as ’andsome does’; so don’t let me hear any more of it."