She looked over her book with utter content.

In a line with her, on the boys' side, there appeared a covertly peeping face under a thatch of light hair, and Ellen, influenced insensibly by the boy's shyly worshipful eyes, looked and saw Granville Joy.

She remembered the Christmas top, and blushed very pink without knowing why, and flirted all her curls towards the boys' side.
Ellen, from having so little acquaintance with boys, had had no very well-defined sentiments towards them, but now, on being set apart with her feminine element, and separated so definitely by the middle aisle of the school-room, she began to experience sensations both of shyness and exclusiveness.

She did not think the boys, in their coarse clothes, with their cropped heads, half as pretty as the girls.
The teacher coming down the aisle laid a caressing hand on Ellen's curls, and the child looked up at her with that confidence which is exquisite flattery.
After she had passed, Ellen heard a subtle whisper somewhere at her back; it was half audible, but its meaning was entirely plain.

It signified utmost scorn and satirical contempt.