"Was," corrected Hilda softly, and then they ran away before I even knew what they meant. A little boy, whom I had seen in the company of my brother many times before, came along, said something very rude as he passed and put his tongue out at me. But what did that boy matter? What did the whole world matter now? I stood as if I was dazed, and might have stood there longer if my little brother had not begun to cry. That made me conscious of a terrible shame and of a sharp pain in my arm, and I felt that the child was heavy. I noticed also that it was nearly dinnertime and knew that my mother was waiting for me. I called my little sister, who had been ceaselessly picking up stones from the ground, and, avoiding the crowded streets as much as I could, I made for home. My mother was standing in front of our gate, and looking searchingly up and down the street. Having caught sight of us she came to meet me and took the boy from my arms. "Where have you been?" she asked; "you look hot." "I am terribly hungry," I said, and slipped into the house while my mother followed slowly with the children. Soon afterwards we sat down to dinner, and my mother was busily preparing the food for the little ones. I helped her a little, handing her a fork, a spoon, or anything that was beyond her reach. After a pause of some length my mother said: "Did you see any of your friends?" "No," I replied without hesitation, hastily swallowing a large mouthful. I could feel how the blood rushed back into my cheeks, not because I had told a lie (I often told lies), but because I heard the cruel words hum in my head again. "You are getting quite a big girl now," my mother continued after a pause, "and you could make yourself very useful at home, if it were not that you have to go to school again." A silly, incomprehensible fear immediately gripped me. Until that moment I had not thought of having to go to school again. "Mother," I said, and lifted up my arms imploringly, "pray do not send me to school again." "You are getting more and more lazy; you ought to be ashamed of yourself." "So I am," I answered rudely. My mother got up from the chair suddenly, and I thought that she was going to beat me for such an impudent answer. But she did not beat me; she bent down to one of the little ones and, with her face turned away, told me to clear the things from the table.