But--don't tell any one--they've stuck me here, behind her now, and when
she's coaching that young idiot Susie Parker--"
"Laura, that is not the way to speak of your school-fellows."
"I know it isn't, but she _is_, you know. I've bought the books, and I
get behind them and I listen hard, and I can read now. What's more, I've
done a bit of a chorus. Look--" The pariah took a dirty bit of paper from
the breast of her gown. "It goes, 'Oh Love unconquered in battle,' and
it's simply splend_if_erous. Miss Quincey--when you like anything very
much--or any_body_--it doesn't matter which--do you turn red all over? Do
you have creeps all down your back? And do you feel it just here?" The
child clapped her yellow claw to Miss Quincey's heart. "You _do_, you do,
Miss Quincey; I can see it go thump, I can feel it go thud!"
She gazed into the teacher's face, and again the power of divination was
upon her.
"Laura!" Miss Quincey gasped; for the Head had been looming in their
neighbourhood, a deadly peril, and now she was sweeping down on them,
smiling a dangerous smile.
"Miss Quincey, I hope you've been making that child work," said she and
passed on.
"I _say_! She didn't see my verses, did she? You _won't_ let on that I
wrote them?"
"You'll never write verses," said Miss Quincey, deftly improving a bad
occasion, "if you don't understand arithmetic.
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