er. Perhaps," she added honestly,
"I never knew. Let me call Letty, and ask her to bring her atlas."

"Letty won't know," said Susie impatiently, "she only knows the things
she oughtn't to."

"Oh, she isn't as wise as all that," said Anna, ringing the bell.
"Anyhow she has maps, which is more than we have."

A servant was sent to request Miss Letty Estcourt to attend in the
drawing-room with her atlas.

"Whatever's in the wind now?" inquired Letty, open-mouthed, of her
governess. "They're not going to examine me this time of night, are
they, Leechy?" For she suffered greatly from having a brother who was
always passing examinations and coming out top, and was consequently
subjected herself, by an ambitious mother who was sure that she must be
equally clever if she would only let herself go, to every examination
that happened to be going for girls of her age; so that she and Miss
Leech spent their days either on the defensive, preparing for these
unprovoked assaults, or in the state of collapse which followed the
regularly recurring defeat, and both found their lives a burden too
great to be borne.

There was a preliminary scuffle of washing and brushing, and then Letty
marched into the drawing-room, her atlas under her arm and deep
suspicion on her face. But no bland and treacherous examiner was
visible, covering his preliminary movements with ghastly pleasantries;
only her mother and her pretty aunt.

"Where's Stralsund?" they cried together, as she opened the door.

Letty stopped short and stared. "What's that?" she asked.

"It's a place--a place in Germany."

"Letty, do you mean to tell me that you don't know where Stralsund is?"
asked Susie, in a voice that would have been of thunder if it had been
big enough. "Do you mean to say that after all the money I have spent on
your education you don't know _that_?"

Was this a new form of torture? Was she to find the examining spirit
lurking even in the familiar and hitherto harmless forms of her mother
and her aunt? She openly showed her disgust. "If it's a place, it's in
this atlas," she said, "and if this is going to be an examination, I
don't think it's fair; and if it's a game, I don't like it." And she
threw her atlas unceremoniously on to the nearest chair; for though her
mother could force her to do many things, she could never, somehow,
force her to be respectful.

"What a horror the child has of lessons!" cried Susie. "Don't be so
silly. We only wan