"Yes?" politely inquired another. "That's rather unusual for Andrews. We have so many beautiful girls, but so few brilliant ones. Peggy Parsons may be popular--and she may develop into a genius, but she'll never be a belle, will she? Not like some of our girls."
Peggy's feet grew heavy on the stairs. She went miserably on to her room and there carefully locked the door, and went and stood before the mirror. She had never been conscious of just how she did look before. She had never thought of being beautiful, but much less had she thought of being NOT beautiful. That was too tragic. She saw a little sober face, with clear brown eyes, and goldy flyaway hair above them.
"Oh, people will only like me when I laugh," she cried, and her face crinkled into its familiar expression of merriment, and she watched the fine dark eyebrows curve upward, and the dimples dance crookedly into the flushed cheeks.
"Ye--es," she said slowly. "It isn't so bad then. But I _will_--be a belle, anyway. You see if I'm not, I will be one and surprise them all. Maybe I've never tried to make myself look pretty before. I will try awfully hard now. And I'll turn out the most wonderful belle of them all, I shouldn't wonder. So there, now."
She danced back from the mirror, her hair-brush in her hand.
"I'll begin at the top," she said, "and I'll see what I can do."
Just then Miss Carrol knocked at the door.
"Come in," sang Peggy blithely, her spirits more or less restored by the prospect of the task she had set herself.
"I can't," announced Miss Carrol's voice.
"Oh, I forgot," cried Peggy, and she ran to the door and turned the key. Flinging it open, she laughed up into Miss Carrol's face. "Come in," she invited a second time, "I'm _very_ glad to see somebody even if you've only come to scold me. _Have_ you come to scold me?"
Miss Carrol shook her head, and explained that Mrs. Forest had relented, and she was to be of the matinée party, after all.
"Excuse me," she said, "for mussing up your dress, but I just had to. People have been hurting my feelings all the morning and now you come and are--kind. And it means that I can be one right now. I'll be one for this!"
"One what?" asked the youngest teacher, puzzled. "You girls have the oddest things in your minds half the time. What is it you're going to be now?"