elf in her wrath she seemed a head taller and proportionately
broad. She tossed her yellow head, and her face took on an
expression of noble courage and indignation, but she never said a
word. She simply took Abby Atkins by the arms and lifted her off her
feet and seated her on the ground. Then she picked up her blue
ribbon, and walked off, and Abby scrambled to her feet and looked
after her with a vanquished but untamed air. Nobody had seen what
happened except Abby's younger sister Maria and Granville Joy.
Granville pressed stealthily close to Ellen as she marched away and
whispered, his face blazing, his voice full of confidence and
congratulation, "Say, if she'd been a boy, I'd licked her for you,
and you wouldn't hev had to tech her yourself;" and Maria walked up
and eyes her prostrate but defiantly glaring sister--"I ain't sorry
one mite, Abby Atkins," she declared--"so there."

"You go 'long," returned Abby, struggling to her feet, and shaking
her small skirts energetically.

"Your dress is jest as wet as if you'd set down in a puddle, and
you'll catch it when you get home," Maria said, pitilessly.

"I ain't afraid."

"What made you touch her, anyhow; she hadn't done nothin'?"

"If you want to wear shoe-strings when other folks wear ribbons, you
can," said Abby Atkins. She walked away, switching, with unabated
dignity in the midst of defeat, the draggled tail of her poor little
dress. She had gone down like a cat; she was not in the least hurt
except in her sense of justice; that was jarred to a still greater
lack of equilibrium. She felt as if she had been floored by
Providence in conjunction with a blue bow, and her very soul rose in
futile rebellion. But, curiously enough, her personal ire against
Ellen vanished.

At the afternoon recess she gave Ellen the sound half of an old red
Baldwin apple which she had brought for luncheon, and watched her
bite into it, which Ellen did readily, for she was not a child to
cherish enmity, with an odd triumph. "The other half ain't fit to
eat, it's all wormy," said Abby Atkins, flinging it away as she
spoke.

"Then you ought to have kept this," Ellen cried out, holding towards
her the half, minus one little bite. But Abby Atkins shook her head
forcibly. "That was why I gave it to you," said she. "Say, didn't
you never have to tie up your hair with a shoe-string?" Ellen shook
her head, looking at her wonderingly. Then with a sudden impulse she
tore off the blue ri