r.

"There's the bell! Don't give us much time, do they? Now for the torture
chamber again! Brace your nerves!"

"I wonder if most of them have done better or worse than I have!"
thought Winona, as she took her seat once more at No. 10 desk. "A good
many were grumbling, but that sandy-haired girl in the spectacles said
nothing. No more did the one with the red hair-ribbon. Of course they
might be feeling too agonized for words, but on the other hand they
might be secretly congratulating themselves."

It was not the moment, however, for speculation as to her neighbors'
progress. The next set of questions was being distributed, and she took
up her copy eagerly. Her heart fell as she read it over. Her knowledge
of English history was not very accurate, and the facts demanded were
for the most part exactly those which she could not remember. The dread
of failure loomed up large. She could only attempt about half of the
questions, and even in these she was not ready with dates. Then suddenly
Percy's advice flashed into her mind. "Write from a romantic standpoint,
and make your paper sound poetical." It seemed rather a forlorn hope,
and she feared it would scarcely satisfy her examiners, but in such a
desperate situation anything was worth trying. Winona possessed a
certain facility in essay writing. Prose composition had been her
favorite lesson at Miss Harmon's. She collected her wits now, and did
the very utmost of which she was capable in the matter of style.
Choosing question No. 4, "Write a life of Lady Jane Grey," she proceeded
to treat the subject in as post-impressionist a manner as possible. The
pathetic tragedy of the young Queen had always appealed to her
imagination, and she could have had no more congenial a theme upon which
to write, if she had been given free choice of all the characters in the
history book.

"'Whom the gods love die young,'" she began, and paused. It seemed an
excellent opening, if she could only continue in the same strain, but
what ought to come next? Her thoughts flew to a painting of Lady Jane
Grey, which she had once seen at a loan collection of Tudor portraits.
Why should she not describe it? Her pen flew rapidly as she wrote a
word-picture of the sweet, pale face, so round and childish in spite of
its earnest expression; the smooth yellow hair, the gray eyes bent
demurely over the book. Her heroine seemed beginning to live. Now for
her surroundings. A year ago Winona had paid a vis