"I wish you would!" "There goes the gong for tea!" "I am willing. I'll go without supper before I will give up this drawer, and you may as well understand that first as last." "You are perfectly hateful! You aren't even decently polite." "I can't see that _you_ have more than your share of manners." "You are as horrid as your name." "You are a great deal worse than yours!" "Girls, girls! What is the reason that you are not down in the dining hall?" Miss Pomeroy, stately, majestic and stern, stood unannounced in the doorway. "She won't let me have a drawer to put my things in," began the girl with curly hair and the handsome face. "That's a lie!" screamed Tabitha, bouncing to her feet and dancing up and down in furious passion. "Tabitha Catt! I am surprised at you!" exclaimed the principal, looking sorrowfully at the angry child. "Chrystobel, what is all this racket about?" "I put my things in the dresser, and she said I had taken her drawer and couldn't have it." "She did take my drawer--" "Tabitha, I am talking to Chrystobel now." "She took both big drawers and--" "Tabitha!" "Expected me to have just those two little ones in the top--" "Tabitha!" "She said you said she could have her choice and--" "Will you listen to me?" "She dumped my things out of the drawer--the bottom one--and poked them in those little mites of ones. It isn't fair--" "Tabitha Catt!" "For her to have two big ones and me two little ones, but--" "Tabitha, leave the room until I call you again!" "She wouldn't give up either one," and in a perfect storm of grief and anger, Tabitha swept out of the room, her expostulations still pouring in a torrent from her quivering lips; and throwing herself flat on the hall floor, she buried her face in her arms. For some minutes Miss Pomeroy's low, even voice could be heard in the little room at the end of the corridor, interrupted occasionally by Chrystobel's sullen tones; then Tabitha was summoned again, and with reddened eyes she entered the door to learn her fate. "Tabitha, Chrystobel is sorry she took your belongings out of the bottom drawer without asking your leave, and she has put them back as she found them--" "She has opened every blessed thing and peeked at it," was Tabitha's indignant comment as she saw the mussed-up contents of the lower drawer, now restored to its place in the dresser. "Tabitha!" Miss Pomeroy's lips twitched, but her voice was very stern, and the maid from Silver Bow flushed redder than ever, and contritely cried, "That was very hateful of me, but really, Miss Pomeroy, she never put those things back as she found them, because I had that drawer looking very neat and now see the muddle it is in!"