buzzings of talk--had stolen over the
partition that separated the cloak-room from the class-room, and
Elizabeth, sitting on the high-backed form, with all the other empty
forms in front of her, nibbled her pencil in melancholy loneliness.

She wondered if Nellie Underwood and Cyril would wait for her. Only
yesterday she had waited a dreary hour for them and had carried Cyril's
bag home for him to ease his wounded spirit.

Then she began her task. She seized a slate, arranged two slate-pencils
to work together and expedite her task and wrote: "Elizabeth Bruce
detained for inattention."

When she had written the statement ten times the silence in the
cloak-room struck chill upon her. All the rest had found their hats and
bonnets then and gone outside.

She sat on the floor under her desk and tried to see the playground
through the open door. Two small pinkly-clad figures dashed past the
door, chased by a maiden in blue--all screaming and laughing.

"Nell Underwood!" ejaculated Betty gladly, and went back to her slate
warmed and cheered.

She made her pencils work harder than before, kneeling upon the form in
an excess of industry.

Even as she wrote the statement for the fortieth time, voices and
laughter came from the playground--but a cold silence had come by the
fiftieth.

At the sixtieth her little moist hand was cramped, and she had to stay
to work her fingers rapidly. At the seventieth the tears were trickling
down her cheeks, for she was only Elizabeth Bruce "detained for
inattention," the schoolroom was only a schoolroom, and the forms were
only forms--and empty. And that was the master down at the desk there,
exercise books and slates around him and a pen behind his ear. For a
space the tears splashed down hard and fast upon her slate and the sight
of the big drops aroused her self-pity. The larger the splashes the
larger her self-sorrow.

A sharp "Go on with your work, Elizabeth Bruce" waked her to the
necessity of drying her eyes and slate and adjusting her pencils for
again writing, "Elizabeth Bruce detained for inattention."

But at the eightieth time of writing it, she was no longer Elizabeth
Bruce, the daughter of a moneyless author. Her name was now Geraldine
Montgomery, and she was the adopted daughter of a millionaire. Her
mother, she had decided, was a gipsy, and was even now hovering near at
hand to steal back her beautifully dressed child.

By the time she had written the melancholy st