She approached them and said, "Won't you come skating, too?"
Miss Thrasher, hardly older than Betty herself, and pretty in a white frightened way, refused, but almost cheerfully. "I have a Christmas box to open and Christmas letters to write. Thank you very much."
Betty's heart sank as she saw Miss Hyle's face. "Goodness, she's coming!"
Miss Hyle was the most unpopular teacher in school. Neither ill-tempered nor harsh, she was so cold, remote and rigid in face, voice, and manner that the warmest blooded shivered away from her, the least sensitive shrank.
"I have no skates, but I should like to borrow a pair to learn, if I may. I have never tried," she said.
The tragedies of a beginner on skates are to the observers, especially if such be school-girls, subjects for unalloyed mirth. The nine girls choked and turned their backs and even giggled aloud as Miss Hyle went prone, now backward with a whack, now forward in a limp crumple.
But amusement became admiration. Miss Hyle stumbled, fell, laughed merrily, scrambled up, struck out, and skated. Presently she was swinging up the pond in stroke with Betty and Eleanor O'Neill.
"Miss Hyle, you're great!" cried Betty, at the end of the morning. "I've taught dozens and scores to skate, but never anybody like you. You've a genius for skating."
Miss Hyle's blue eyes shot a sudden flash at Betty that made her whole severe face light up.
"I've never had a chance to learn--at home there never is any ice--but I have always been athletic."
"Where is your home, Miss Hyle?" asked Betty.
"India?" gasped Eleanor. "How delightful! Oh, won't you tell us about it, Miss Hyle?"
So it was that Miss Hyle found herself talking about something besides triangles to girls who really wanted to hear, and so it was that the flash came often into her eyes.
"I have had a happy morning, thank you, Betty--and all." She said it very simply, yet a quick throb of pity and liking beat in Betty's heart.
"How stupid we are about judging people!" she thought. Yet Betty had always prided herself on her character-reading.
"Hurrah, the mail and express are in!" The girls ran excitedly to their rooms.
Betty alone went to hers without interest. "Why, Hilma, what's happened?"
The little round-faced Swedish maid mopped the big tears with her duster, and choked out: