Not so Judith! It had taken her a moment to understand the way in which the news was being received. When she did, she turned very pale, and broke out into a storm of anger. She stuttered and halted as she always did when overmastered by feeling, but her words were molten. She ignored the tacit separation between children of different grades and, though but a third-grader, threw herself passionately among the girls who were talking of the picnic, clawing at their arms, forcing her way to the center, a raging, white-faced, hot-eyed little thunderbolt. "You're the meanest low-down things I ever heard of!" she told the astonished older girls, fairly spitting at them in her fury. "You--you go and s-sponge off the Fingáls for c-c-cakes and rides and s-s-soda water--and you think they're too l-l-lovely for w-words--and you t-t-try to do your hair just the way C-C-Camilla does. They aren't any different today f-f-from what they were yesterday--are they? You make me sick--you m-m-make m-m-me--" The big bell rang out its single deep brazen note for the formation of lines, and the habit of unquestioning, instant obedience to its voice sent the children all scurrying to their places, from which they marched forward to their respective classrooms in their usual convict silence. Just as the line ahead was disappearing into the open door, the well-kept, shining surrey drove up in haste and Camilla and Cécile, dazzling in fresh white dresses and white hair ribbons, ran to their places. Evidently they had heard nothing. Camilla turned and smiled brightly at her friend as she stepped along in front of her. Sylvia experienced another giddy reaction of feeling. Up to that moment, she had felt nothing but shocked and intensely self-centered horror at the disagreeableness of what had happened, and a wild desire to run away to some quiet spot where she would not have to think about it, where it could not make her unhappy, where her heart would stop beating so furiously. What had she ever done to have such a horrid thing happen in her world! She had been as much repelled by Judith's foaming violence as by any other element of the situation. If she could only get away! Every sensitive nerve in her, tuned to a graceful and comely order of life, was rasped to anguish by the ugliness of it all. Up to the moment Camilla came running to her place--this had been the dominant impulse in the extreme confusion of Sylvia's mind.