Dance of the Happy Shades

playing Truth or Secrets. One day she came out and called, “Girls in Grade Six, I want to talk to you!” She smiledpersuasively, earnestly, and with dreadful unease, showing fine gold rims around her teeth. She said, “There is a girl in Grade Six called Myra Sayla. She
is
in your grade, isn’t she?”
    We mumbled. But there was a coo from Gladys Healey. “Yes, Miss Darling!”
    “Well, why is she never playing with the rest of you? Every day I see her standing in the back porch, never playing. Do you think she looks very happy standing back there? Do you think you would be very happy, if
you
were left back there?”
    Nobody answered; we faced Miss Darling, all respectful, self-possessed, and bored with the unreality of her question. Then Gladys said, “Myra can’t come out with us, Miss Darling. Myra has to look after her little brother!”
    “Oh,” said Miss Darling dubiously. “Well you ought to try to be nicer to her anyway. Don’t you think so? Don’t you? You will try to be nicer, won’t you? I
know
you will.” Poor Miss Darling! Her campaigns were soon confused, her persuasions turned to bleating and uncertain pleas.
    When she had gone Gladys Healey said softly, “You will try to be nicer, won’t you? I
know
you will!” and then drawing her lip back over her big teeth she yelled exuberantly, “I don’t care if it rains or freezes.” She went through the whole verse and ended it with a spectacular twirl of her Royal Stuart tartan skirt. Mr. Healey ran a Dry Goods and Ladies’ Wear, and his daughter’s leadership in our class was partly due to her flashing plaid skirts and organdie blouses and velvet jackets with brass buttons, but also to her early-maturing bust and the fine brutal force of her personality. Now we all began to imitate Miss Darling.
    We had not paid much attention to Myra before this. But now a game was developed; it started with saying, “Let’s be nice to Myra!” Then we would walk up to her in formal groups of three or four and at a signal, say together, “Hel-lo Myra, Hello
My
-ra!” and follow up with something like, “What do you wash your hair in, Myra, it’s so nice and shiny,My-ra.” “Oh she washes it in cod-liver oil, don’t you, Myra, she washes it in cod-liver oil, can’t you smell it?”
    And to tell the truth there was a smell about Myra, but it was a rotten-sweetish smell as of bad fruit. That was what the Saylas did, kept a little fruit store. Her father sat all day on a stool by the window, with his shirt open over his swelling stomach and tufts of black hair showing around his belly button; he chewed garlic. But if you went into the store it was Mrs. Sayla who came to wait on you, appearing silently between the limp print curtains hung across the back of the store. Her hair was crimped in black waves and she smiled with her full lips held together, stretched as far as they would go; she told you the price in a little rapping voice, daring you to challenge her and, when you did not, handed you the bag of fruit with open mockery in her eyes.
    One morning in the winter I was walking up the school hill very early; a neighbour had given me a ride into town. I lived about half a mile out of town, on a farm, and I should not have been going to the town school at all, but to a country school nearby where there were half a dozen pupils and a teacher a little demented since her change of life. But my mother, who was an ambitious woman, had prevailed on the town trustees to accept me and my father to pay the extra tuition, and I went to school in town. I was the only one in the class who carried a lunch pail and ate peanut-butter sandwiches in the high, bare, mustard-coloured cloakroom, the only one who had to wear rubber boots in the spring, when the roads were heavy with mud. I felt a little danger, on account of this; but I could not tell exactly what it was.
    I saw Myra and Jimmy ahead of me on the hill; they always went to school very early—sometimes so early that they had to stand outside waiting for the janitor to open the door. They were walking slowly, and now and then Myra half turned around. I had often loitered in that way, wanting to walk with some important girl who was behind me, and not quitedaring to stop and wait. Now it occurred to me that Myra might be doing this with me. I did not know what to do. I could not afford to be seen walking with her, and I did not even want to—but, on the other hand, the flattery of those humble,