odors into the open sunlit road.


CHAPTER III


Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other scholars, Mliss
still retained an offensive attitude in regard to Clytemnestra. Perhaps
the jealous element was not entirely lulled in her passionate little
breast. Perhaps it was only that the round curves and plump outline
offered more extended pinching surface. But while such ebullitions
were under the master's control, her enmity occasionally took a new and
irrepressible form.

The master in his first estimate of the child's character could not
conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like many
other professed readers of character, was safer in a posteriori than a
priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll, but then it was emphatically Mliss's
doll--a smaller copy of herself. Its unhappy existence had been a
secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Morpher. It had been the old-time
companion of Mliss's wanderings, and bore evident marks of suffering.
Its original complexion was long since washed away by the weather and
anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked very much as Mliss had in
days past. Its one gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged, as hers
had been. Mliss had never been known to apply to it any childish term of
endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of other children. It
was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the schoolhouse, and only
allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles. Fulfilling a stern duty to her
doll, as she would to herself, it knew no luxuries.