echlessness. Whereupon Clarabel dropped her book, and had to
pick it up with both hands. The furry wrists revealed themselves fully.

Josephine found her voice.

"You've got some new gloves," she said.

"Yes; my Aunt Bessie sent them."

"Aren't they pretty!"

"I think so, and they're lots nicer than mittens. I'm not going to wear
my mittens again."

Josephine looked down at her own chubby hands. Her mittens were red this
winter, with a red-and-green fringe around the wrists. Only that
morning she had admired them. Now they looked fat and clumsy and
altogether unattractive; but she wasn't going to admit that to any one
else.

[Illustration: "CLARABEL DROPPED HER BOOK, AND HAD TO PICK IT UP WITH
BOTH HANDS."]

"I like mittens best," she said stoutly,--"for school, anyway," she
added, and gave Clarabel more of the sidewalk.

"My Aunt Bessie said specially that these were to wear to school." And
Clarabel walked nearer the fence.

Josephine was hard put to it--Clarabel's manner had become so superior.

"I don't think your Aunt Bessie knows everything, even if she does teach
school in a big city. My mother says she's too young to--"

What she was too young to do was not allowed to be explained; for
Clarabel, with a color in her face that rivaled Josephine's mittens, had
faced her.

"My Aunt Bessie's lovely, and I won't listen to another word against
her, not another one--so there!"

Then she turned, with a queer feeling in her throat, and ran down the
street to catch up with another little girl who was on ahead.

Josephine swung her books and walked as if she didn't care.

Clarabel overtook the little girl, who was all smiling appreciation of
the new gloves, and was overtaken by other little girls who added
themselves to the admiring group. But somehow her triumphal progress was
strangely unsatisfactory; the glory was dimmed.

At recess, Josephine paired off with Milly Smith, who stood first in
geography and wore two curly feathers in her hat. Clarabel shared her
cookies with Minnie Cater, because it didn't matter who helped eat them
if it wasn't Josephine. Neither spoke to the other, and at noontime they
walked home on different sides of the street.

Perhaps that was why in the afternoon Clarabel lost her place in the
reader and failed on so many examples in arithmetic that she was told
she must stay after school.

Usually there would have been several to keep her company, but on this
day there w