She simply took Abby Atkins by the arms and lifted her off her feet and seated her on the ground.

Then she picked up her blue ribbon, and walked off, and Abby scrambled to her feet and looked after her with a vanquished but untamed air.

Nobody had seen what happened except Abby's younger sister Maria and Granville Joy.
Granville pressed stealthily close to Ellen as she marched away and whispered, his face blazing, his voice full of confidence and congratulation, "Say, if she'd been a boy, I'd licked her for you, and you wouldn't hev had to tech her yourself;" and Maria walked up and eyes her prostrate but defiantly glaring sister--"I ain't sorry one mite, Abby Atkins," she declared--"so there." "You go 'long," returned Abby, struggling to her feet, and shaking her small skirts energetically.
"Your dress is jest as wet as if you'd set down in a puddle, and you'll catch it when you get home," Maria said, pitilessly.
"I ain't afraid." "What made you touch her, anyhow; she hadn't done nothin' ?" "If you want to wear shoe-strings when other folks wear ribbons, you can," said Abby Atkins.

She walked away, switching, with unabated dignity in the midst of defeat, the draggled tail of her poor little dress.

She had gone down like a cat; she was not in the least hurt except in her sense of justice; that was jarred to a still greater lack of equilibrium.