In that "anyway" she found vent for all her crossness. Sometimes she
said, "I don't care," but when she said, "I don't care, _anyway_!"
then everybody knew that Marjorie West was dreadful.

"I'm _through_," she thought triumphantly, "and I didn't cheat, and I
wasn't mean, and nobody has helped me."

Yes, somebody had helped her. She was sorry that she forgot to think that
God had helped her. Perhaps people always did get through! If they didn't
help themselves along by doing wrong and--God helped them. The sunshine
rippled over her face again and she counted the words on her slate for
the second time to assure herself that there could be no possible
mistake. Slowly she counted seven hundred, then with a sudden impulse
seized her pencil and wrote each of the seven words five times more to be
"_sure_ they were all right."

Josie Grey called her "horridly conscientious," and even Rie Blauvelt
wished that she would not think it wicked to "tell" in the class, and to
whisper about something else when they had permission to whisper about
the lessons.

By this time you have learned that my little Marjorie was strong and
sweet. I wish you might have seen her that afternoon as she crouched over
the wooden desk, snuggled down in the coarse, plaid shawl, her elbows
resting on the hard desk, her chin dropped in her two plump hands, with
her eyes fixed on the long, closely written columns of her large slate.
She was not sitting in her own seat, her seat was the back seat on the
girls' side, of course, but she was sitting midway on the boys' side, and
her slate was placed on the side of the double desk wherein H.R. was cut
in deep, ugly letters. She had fled to this seat as to a refuge, when she