Sea, sun and air did their healing work, as did also the long idle days in the home garden; Laura drank in health and vigour, with every breath.
She had need of it all when, the golden holidays over, she returned to school; for the half-year that broke, was, in many ways, the most trying she had yet to face. True her dupes first virulence had waned - they no longer lashed her openly with their tongues - but the quiet, covert insults. That were now the rule, were every bit as hard to bear; and before a week had passed, Laura was telling herself that, had she been a Christian Martyr, she would have preferred to be torn asunder with one jerk, rather than submit to the thumbkin. Not an eye but looked askance at her; on every face was painted a reminder of her moral inferiority; and even new comers among the boarders learnt, without always knowing what her crime had been, that Laura Rambotham was "not the thing".
The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson, 1910.
