Storytelling for Week 2: Abigail and the China Doll

At a modern French boarding school, there lived a little girl named Abigail. She had curly blonde hair held back in two plaits, and her plain blue dress accented her light eyes. She loved her teachers and her lessons. She was only required to take six classes, but she skillfully balanced nine.

"Now girls, who can tell me the colors of the French flag in order?" Ms. Martine asked the class one day.

Abigail's hand shot up into the musty air of the damp classroom before any of the others.

After she politely waited for Ms. Martine to call on her, Abigail said, "Blue, white, and red, mademoiselle."

"Correct," Ms. Martine said.

Abigail had already answered the question before the other girls had had a chance to consider it. Eleven little pairs of beady eyes glared at her as she beamed with the warmth of Ms. Martine's approval.

This was a regular occurrence for Abigail, and over time, her classmates grew to disgust her. They were jealous of her motivation, exceptional grades, and the relationship she had with Ms. Martine.

The other girls made fun of her and pulled her hair.

"Abigail's a teacher's pet," Fleur jeered.

"She doesn't have any friends," Selina called, yanking on Abigail's braid as Selina marched by.

The jealous girls tried to get Abigail in trouble by messing up her bed right before inspections, hiding her homework, and undoing her chores. At first, House Mistress Karlotta was livid with Abigail for breaking the rules. But then, House Mistress Karlotta began to catch the other girls in the act.

No matter what the students did to sway Abigail's popularity with the teachers, Abigail's reputation always prevailed.

Then one day, the school girls contrived a brilliant plan. They would take Ms. Martine's treasured glass doll, and smash her on the stairs just as Abigail was coming up.

So Fleur pushed a chair up to the forbidden shelf in Ms. Martine's office and took the pretty china doll with the rosy cheeks and perfectly curled blonde hair. She carefully smoothed her flowery dress.

(Image information: Shirley Temple Doll by C.E. Price.)

Then, the girls all in a tizzy, they ran down the hallway to wait for Abigail by the stairs. When they heard her cheery voice singing a nursery rhyme, they knew she was drawing close. Just before she rounded the landing of the stairs, Fleur threw the doll down with a shattering crash. The girls ran away, tittering over Abigail's misfortune.

"Oh, no!" Abigail cried as she took stock of the doll's broken pieces. She carefully picked each one up and tried to reassemble the doll, but the pieces merely fell once more.

Meanwhile, the other girls had fetched Ms. Martine to show her what Abigail had done to the poor doll.

But when Ms. Martine and the girls arrived on the scene, they found Abigail seated cross-legged in the landing, carefully gluing all of the doll's pieces back into place.

Ms. Martine knew from the concerned look on Abigail's face that there was no way she could have harmed the doll.

In the end, the other girls learned their lesson and were encouraged to make friends with Abigail. The china doll was repaired and looked almost as good as new. And Abigail and Ms. Martine remained fast friends.

Author's Note: This story was inspired by Saint Kentigern and the Robin by Abbie Farwell Brown (1900). In that story, Saint Kentigern is bullied by his schoolmates, and they try to get him in trouble for killing their teacher's pet robin. But through the grace of God, Saint Kentigern brings the robin back to life, and all is well.

I chose to tell this story from the point of view of the little girl to contrast the mean bullying with Abigail's innocence. So I changed the characters and the teacher's item that gets destroyed, but I kept the schoolhouse setting and the themes of jealousy and bullying. My main goals for this story were to make it entertaining and easy for the reader to identify with.