er. But somehow she never
had time for scrubbing her desk and decorating it with rows of cards
and frills of colored paper, as Rosie so often did. There were so many
things to do in school. She was thankful, however, that she was not
like big, fat Joel Davis across the aisle there, who spat on his slate
and rubbed it with his sleeve. It was his action, one which Miss
Hillary characterized as disgusting and unsanitary, that had called
forth the little talk. And she ended up with the announcement that
once a week she would give a short talk on "Manners and Morals."

Elizabeth scented a new word. "Disgusting" she knew, Aunt Margaret
often used it. It meant the opposite to genteel. But "insanitary" was
a discovery. She tried to store it in her mind, not daring to move her
tightly folded hands towards her slate. Perhaps it was something like
insanity, and Miss Hillary meant that anyone who didn't use a slate-rag
and water-bottle was crazy.

But the examination was on, and the Senior Thirds, anxious and hopeful,
were soon at work. Arithmetic came first, and only the anticipation of
better things to come, and the forlorn hope that the problem might
somehow turn out right by chance, kept up Elizabeth's spirits. There
were three problems, and she could make nothing of them, though she
added, subtracted, divided, and multiplied, and covered her slate with
figures in the hope of achieving something. She worked in some
statements, too, for Rosie had advised her that written statements
always looked nice, and would probably make the teacher think the
question was well done anyway. So in the complex problem inquiring how
many men would eat how much salt pork in how many days, Elizabeth set
down carefully:

If 18 men eat 36 lbs. in 1 day,
Then 1 men eat 36 lbs. X 18 men.

It might not be right, but it looked well anyway. Rosie telegraphed
her answer on her fingers, but Elizabeth shut her eyes tight and turned
away. Not if she were to be put into Archie's class would she stoop to
such methods to gain marks.

Spelling was not much better. There were ten awful words, all from a
lesson Elizabeth had long ago given up, "Egypt and its Ruins." There
were "pyramids" and "hieroglyphics," and many others quite as bad, and
when she was through with them they presented an orthographical ruin
which might put any of the fallen temples of Egypt to shame.

But all her trials were forgotten when at the end Miss Hillary