boy," said the little girl.

"Sit down, and stay in the dinner-hour and write out the sentence fifty
times."

Elizabeth sat down, and again her anger against the new boy blazed high.

She put out her foot and kicked the heel of his boot, but this time she
eschewed words, for the face of the master was towards her, and an
expectant silence hung over the schoolroom.

The clock struck ten, and the boy at the head of the class immediately
began passing slates down--one to each pupil, with a piece of pencil
upon it.

The sight of the well-cleaned slate and nicely pointed pencil brought a
feeling of great uneasiness to Elizabeth.

It had been in her mind how nicely she could climb above the new boy,
and the tell-tale girl, and all the other boys and girls, and now the
order of the day was--sums.

The master was writing them down on the blackboard, making them up as he
went along, with due care working nines and eights and sevens into his
multiplicand and dealing but sparsely with fives and twos and threes.

Elizabeth copied it down and rubbed it out. Copied it down and rubbed
out half, by judicious breathings directed judiciously; looked up the
class to see how Cyril was progressing, and back to the board to see if
a pleasant little short division sum was lurking near this obnoxious
multiplication; then back to her slate to count the number of nines
once more. And by that time the master was giving out his order:
"Pencils down. Hands behind you. _At--tention._"

Brown's face expressed such placidity that the master asked him to stand
and give out the answer, and he gave it gladly enough--999.009--which
sounded particularly learned to a class not yet introduced to decimals.

The master nodded. "You are right," he said, "but no one is up to
decimals yet."

So it happened that Brown made his reputation straightway, and with such
ease did he solve every arithmetical puzzle, that dinner-time saw him
sitting smiling and covered with laurels at the head of the class, and
Elizabeth still at the bottom cleaning her slate to write "Cheaty,
cheaty; go home and tell your mother," fifty times.

Wygate School was a preparatory school for boys and girls, although the
girls out-numbered the boys. At the present stage of its existence it
had eighteen girls and twelve boys. Not half a mile distant was a public
school, to the precincts of which flocked fifty pupils daily, each of
whom paid a modest threepence a week for educationa