The Nicest Girl in the School: A Story of School LifeBrazil, Angela
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The Nicest Girl in the School: A Story of School Life
Brazil, Angela
Girls -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Schools -- Juvenile fiction
"She'll be getting into serious trouble some day," she thought. "I wish
she would behave better in Miss Rowe's classes. Things can't always go
on like this, and if Miss Rowe were to tell her to report herself in the
library, I don't believe even Enid would like to face Miss Lincoln and
find her really angry. I know I shouldn't."
It seemed no use for Patty to try remonstrances. Enid only laughed, and
would not listen to her.
"Patty, you're a dear!" she declared. "I love you the best of any girl I
know, but even you can't persuade me to like Miss Rowe. It's no use.
We're flint and steel, or frost and fire; or oil and water, or anything
else you can name that oughtn't to go together, and won't mix. The very
tone of her voice annoys me."
"Why should it?"
"It's so prim. The way she pokes out her chin and says 'Enid!' is most
disagreeable. It always makes me want to be naughty. Yes, it does;
don't shake your head. I've told you a hundred times I'm not good like
you, and I simply can't be. I'm like a bottle of soda-water with the
cork popped, and I have to fizz over sometimes."
It was unfortunate that Enid should have taken such a dislike to her
teacher, for she kept up a state of ill-feeling among the girls which
otherwise would probably have died away. Absurd trifles were magnified
and made much of, and ridiculous grievances were nursed and cherished.
One day Miss Rowe set the upper division a grammar exercise consisting
of two questions. The first was long and very difficult; it was on the
origin of the English language, and required a certain knowledge of
various Anglo-Saxon roots, a list of words derived from ancient British,
and some account of the Norman-French period. The second and shorter
question was simply a sentence to be parsed. No one in the class had a
good memory for derivations. Fourteen out of the fifteen members spent
the half-hour racking their brains and biting the ends of their pens in
vain endeavours to complete their answers to Question 1, so that when it
was time to hand in their exercise books, they had written very little,
and that little was mostly wrong. The exercises were corrected and
returned the next day, and each girl, with the solitary exception of
Ella Johnson, found she had received a bad mark.
"It's too disgusting!" said Beatrice Wynne. "I don't believe even Miss
Rowe herself could have answered that question without looking at the
book."
"How did you manage it, Ella? You're the only one who's scraped
through," asked Avis.
"I didn't attempt it," said Ella. "I did the parsing instead."
"You mean to say you didn't do Question 1 at all?" exclaimed Kitty
Harrison.
"No, not I."
"How abominably unfair!" cried Enid. "I thought everybody had to begin
with the first question. All the rest of us took so long over it, that
we hadn't time for the parsing, and yet we got bad marks, and you, who
hadn't even tried, got a good mark. It's just like Miss Rowe's
meanness."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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