'It's for my sister's baby,' she lamented, seizing her handiwork from the zealous Barbara; 'and if I don't finish it soon, the baby will be too big for head-flannels at all.'
'But--I wanted to do something for you,' protested Babs, in a disappointed tone.
'You've stickied the needle, and left a great black finger-mark on it,' wailed Mary Wells, making fresh discoveries, as she went on, of what Babs _had_ done for her.
Miss Smythe came up to know what the fuss was about; and she promptly added her word to the condemnation of Barbara Berkeley.
'What do you mean by touching anybody else's work, you naughty little girl?' she said sharply. 'You are more trouble than anybody else in the school, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.'
Barbara did not look at all ashamed of herself. She never did when people were cross with her. Mary Wells had the grace to come to her assistance.
'Please, Miss Smythe,' she said, swallowing her mortification at the ravages in the head-flannel, 'it was my fault as well. I took Barbara's work, to begin with.'
The needlework mistress stared from one to the other. 'What's come over the children?' she exclaimed. 'Why are you interfering with each other's work like this?'
Barbara assumed an exaggerated expression of meekness. 'Please, it was because we were both trying to sacrifice ourselves,' she announced.
It certainly sounded a ridiculous reason when it was put that way, but it completed the perplexity of Miss Smythe, and that was something.
'It seems to me,' she said severely, 'that you are strangely forgetting yourself, Barbara Berkeley. Commence what I gave you to do at once, and stand up until I tell you to sit down again.'
'Why, the Canon _said_ we were to forget ourselves,' began Babs, mischievously; and there is no doubt that a further penalty would have been added to her punishment had not Jean Murray made a sudden diversion by dropping her thimble. In spite of the want of success that had attended Barbara's attempt at good works, the influence of the Canon was still very strong among the occupants of the junior playroom; and five girls hastily flung aside their work, and bumped their heads together on the floor in their hurry to restore Jean her property. Jean took it with the grudging manner of one who would like to have been in the fortunate position of conferring rather than of accepting a service; and Miss Smythe in despair condemned five more culprits to a standing position.