In much fear and trembling I approached her. She turned to the chair, where (it would have been ludicrous if it had not all been so horribly solemn) my comb, my boots, my slipper, my shoe-horn, and my bag of cottons lay piled in a tragic little heap. She fastened them securely on to my dress with safety-pins, till I looked like a gipsy pedlar or an old clotheswoman, and bade me return to my place. Burning with indignation I sat down. All my pride was wounded and the tears came swimming into my eyes. I felt she had no right to treat me thus. There were certain fair and recognized penalties for neglected duties at which I should not have rebelled, but to be made a laughing-stock for the whole school was out of all proportion to my offence. I could see the amused smile with which Ernestine Salt nudged her companion, and knew how unmercifully she would tease me afterwards, and the thought that I must spend the entire morning with these absurd things dangling on my back was almost more than my spirit could brook. I gulped back my tears sufficiently to answer "present" when my name was called, and sat, fighting with my face and trying not to feel that every girl in the room was looking at me. There was a slight tug at my dress behind, and Cathy cautiously thrust a tiny scrap of paper into my hand. I managed to read it unobserved: "She's the hatefullest thing that ever was," it ran. "But never mind; don't let her think you care." I scrunched up the paper and held up my head. After all, why should I care? I had committed no very desperate sin, and I knew that nearly everyone must be secretly in sympathy with me. I would brave it out, and show Miss Percy that though she might inflict any punishment she chose she was not able to crush my spirit entirely. As to Ernestine Salt, I would defy her, sneer as she might. It was unfortunate for me that my first lesson of the day should be with Miss Percy. With the wretched boots and bobbins sticking into me whenever I attempted to lean back in my seat, I felt in anything but a docile or tractable frame of mind, and, though she certainly would not have allowed it, I do not think she herself was in the best of tempers. She corrected Janet sharply for stooping, reduced Millicent to the very verge of tears, and even found fault with Cathy's beautifully neat and tidy exercise. We were learning the geography of India, a large map of which hung over the black-board, and in the course of the lesson we were each required in turn to indicate the positions of certain rivers and cities of the Punjaub. I was sitting in class next to Ernestine Salt, and as I rose hastily up to step forward and take the pointer, she suddenly put out her foot, as if by chance, exactly at the moment when I passed her. I tripped, made a desperate effort to save myself, caught wildly at the easel, and fell, sending black-board, map, pegs, pointer, and all with a horrible crash on to the floor.