Thus Elinor was sent to the most select private school of the city. Webster weighed the matter on the scales of boyish justice. If you had a bad disposition, you were rewarded by being better dressed and being sent to the best school; if you had a good disposition, you dressed plainly and went to the public school. What ought he to do about his own disposition? Why not turn it into a bad one? It was among Webster's bewilderments that he was so poorly off as not to be able to muster a troublesome enough disposition to be sent to one of the city's select private schools for boys: he should very much have liked to go! "I go to a private school because I am _nice_," Elinor had boasted to him one morning. She was sitting on the front steps as he came out on his way to school, and she looked very dainty and very charming--a dark, wiry, fiery, restless little creature, and at the moment a bit of brilliant decoration. "And I get nice marks," she added pointedly. He paused to make a quietly contemptuous reply. "Of course you get nice marks: that's what private schools are for--to give everybody nice marks. If you went to the public school, you'd get what you deserved." "Then you seem to deserve very little," said Elinor, smoothing a lock of her black hair over one ear. His rage burst out at her deadly thrust: "You go to a private school because you are a little devil," he said. "Why don't you be a little devil too?" inquired Elinor, her bright eyes mocking him. "Can't you be a little devil too?" He jerked the strap tighter around his battered books: "If you were in the public schools, they wouldn't put up with you. They'd send you home or they'd break you in." "Oh, I don't know," said Elinor, with an encouraging smile, "they seem to get along with you very well." Webster knew that Elinor's teasing, ridiculing eyes followed him as he walked away. They became part of the things that cheapened him in his life. When he had passed through the front gate, he started off in a direction which was not the direction to school. Elinor sang out shrilly: "I know where you are going. But it's of no use. Jenny's sweetheart goes to a private school and he stands well in his classes." He walked on, but turned his face toward her: "It's none of _your_ meddlesome business, you little black scorpion," he said quietly. With an upward bound of his nature he thought of Jenny, a very different sort of girl. Jenny lived in the largest cottage of the block, at the better of the two corners. The families visited intimately. Jenny's father was a coal merchant and Webster's father bought his coal of Jenny's father. A grocer lived in the middle of the block: he bought supplies from that grocer. "If you can," he said, "deal with your neighbours. It will make them more careful: they won't dare ...!" On the contrary, Jenny's father did not deposit his cheques in Webster's father's bank. "Don't do your business with a neighbour," he said. "Neighbours pry."