I bent again before Madame, and got back to my seat as I could. The great business of the day was over, and we soon scattered to our rooms. And I had not been in mine five minutes before the penalties of being distinguished began to come upon me.
"Well, Daisy! " said Miss Lansing "you've got it. How pretty! Isn't it, Macy?"
"It isn't a bit prettier than it ought to be, for a prize in such a school," said Miss Macy. "It will do."
"I've seen handsomer prizes," said Miss Bentley.
"But you've got it, more ways than one, Daisy," Miss Lansing went on. "I declare! Aren't you a distinguished young lady! Madame, too! Why, we all used to think we behaved pretty well _before company_, didn't we, St. Clair?"
"I hate favour and favouritism!" said that young lady, her upper lip taking the peculiar turn to which my attention had once been called. "Madame likes whatever is French."
"But Randolph is not French, are you, Randolph ?" said Black- eyes, who was good-natured through everything.
"Madame is not French herself," said Miss Bentley.
"I hate everything at school!" St. Clair went on.
"It is too bad," said her friend. "Do you know, Daisy, St. Clair always has the prize for compositions. What made you go and write that long stuff about Rameses? the people didn't understand it, and so they thought it was fine."
"I am sure there was a great deal finer writing in Faustina's composition," said Miss Bentley.
I knew very well that Miss St. Clair had been accustomed to win this half yearly prize for good writing. I had expected nothing but that she would win it this time. I had counted neither o n my own success nor on the displeasure it would raise. I took my hat and went over to my dear Miss Cardigan; hoping that ill-humour would have worked itself out by bedtime. But I was mistaken.
St. Clair and I had been pretty near each other in our classes, though once or twice lately I had got an advantage over her; but we had kept on terms of cool social distance until now. Now the spirit of rivalry was awake. I think it began to stir at my Paris dresses and things; Karnak and Mme. Ricard finished the mischief.
On my first coming to school I had been tempted, in my horror at the utter want of privacy, to go to bed without prayer; waiting till the rest were all laid down and asleep and the lights out, and then slipping out of bed with great care not to make a noise, and watching that no whisper of my lips should be loud enough to disturb anybody's slumbers. But I was sure, after a while, that this was a cowardly way of doing; and I could not bear the words, "Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me, and of My words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father." I determined in the vacation that I would do so no more, cost what it might the contrary. It cost a tremendous struggle. I think, in all my life I have done few harder things, than it was to me then to kneel down by the side of my bed in full blaze of the gaslights and with four curious pairs of eyes around to look on; to say nothing of the four busy tongues wagging about nothing all the time. I remember what a hush fell upon them the first night; while beyond the posture of prayer I could do little. Only unformed or half formed thoughts and petitions struggled in my mind, through a crowd of jostling regrets and wishes and confusions, in which I could hardly distinguish anything. But no explosion followed, of either ridicule or amusement, and I had been suffered from that night to do as I would, not certainly always in silence, but quite unmolested.