y
disappointed. She had hoped to come into closer contact with her. She
liked Muriel, she decided, but she did not altogether understand her
half-cordial, half-joking manner. She was rather glad that she was to go
to her French class alone. She had told Muriel not to bother. She could
find the classroom by herself.

As she clicked down the short, left-hand, third floor corridor, she saw
just ahead of her a little blue-clad figure passing through the very
doorway for which she was making. An instant and she too had entered the
room. She stared about her, then walked to a seat directly opposite to
the one now occupied by the girl that looked like Mary. For a brief
moment the girl eyed Marjorie indifferently, then something in the
scrutiny of the other girl evidently annoyed her. She drew her straight
dark brows together in a displeased frown, and deliberately turned her
face away.

By this time perhaps a dozen girls had entered, and, as the clang of the
third bell echoed through the school, an alert little man with a thin,
sensitive face and timid brown eyes, bustled into the room and carefully
closed the door. Hardly had he taken his hand from the knob when the
door was flung open, this time to admit a sharp-featured girl with
bright, dark eyes and a cruel, thin-lipped mouth. Smiling maliciously,
she swung the door shut with an echoing bang. The meek little professor
looked reproachfully at the offender, who did not even appear to see
him.

"The Evil Genius," recognized Marjorie. Her eyes strayed furtively
toward the Mary girl, who had not paid the slightest attention to this
late arrival. "What a hateful person that black-eyed girl is," ran on
Marjorie's thoughts. "I know it was she who made that nice girl cry the
other day. I wish she wasn't quite so distant. The nice girl, I mean.
Oh, dear. I forgot to go up to the professor's desk and register. That's
his fault. He came in late. He'll see me in a minute and ask who I am."

To her extreme surprise, the little man paid no particular attention to
her, but, opening his grammar, began the giving out of the next day's
lesson. This he explained volubly and with many gestures. Marjorie's
lips curved into a half smile as she compared this rather noisy
instructor with Professor Rousseau, of Franklin. Later, when he called
upon his pupils to recite, however, he was a different being. His
politely sarcastic arraignment of those who floundered through the
lessons, accompanie