aid Elise Mokey, splenetically.

"Was _that_ what you were laughing at?" asked Kate. "Seems to me you
choose rather aggravating subjects."

"Aggravations are as good as anything to laugh at, if you only know
how," Bel Bree said.

"They're always handy, at any rate," said Elise.

"I thought 'aggravate' meant making worse than it is," said quiet
little Mary Pinfall.

"Just it, Molly!" answered Bel Bree, quick as a flash. "Take a
plague, make it out seven times as bad as it is, so that it's
perfectly ridiculous and impossible, and then laugh at it. Next time
you put your finger on it, as the Irishman said of the flea, it
isn't there."

"That's hommerpathy," said Miss Proddle. "Hommerpathy cures by
aggravating."

Miss Proddle was tiresome; she always said things that had been said
before, or that needed no saying. Miss Proddle was another of those
old girls who, like Miss Bree among the young ones, have outlived
and lost their Christian names, with their vivacity. Never mind; it
is the Christian name, and the Lord knows them by it, as He did
Martha and Mary.

"_Reductio ad absurdum_," put in Grace Toppings, who had been at a
High School, and studied geometry.

"Grace Toppings!" called out Kate Sencerbox, shortly, "you've
stitched that flounce together with a twist in it!"

Miss Tonker heard, and came round again.

"Gyurls!" she said, with elegantly severe authority, "I _will_ not
have this talking over the work. Miss Toppings, this whole skirt is
an unmitigated muddle. Head-tucks half an inch too near the bottom!
No _room_ for your flounce. If you can't keep to your measures,
you'd better not undertake piece-work. Take that last welt out, and
put it in over the top. And make no more blunders, if you please,
unless you want to be put to plain yard-stitching."

"Eight inches and a half is _some_ room for a flounce, I guess, if
it ain't nine inches," muttered the mathematical Grace, as she began
the slow ripping of the lock-stitched tucking, that would take half
an hour out of the value of her day.

"That's a comfort, ain't it?" whispered mischievous, sharp,
good-natured Kate. "Look here; I'll help, if you won't talk any more
Latin, or Hottentot."

It was of no use to tell those girls not to talk over their work.
The more work they had in them, the more talk; it was a test, like a
steam-gauge. Only the poor, pale, worn-out ones, like Emma Hollen,
who coughed and breathed short, and could not spend strength