o schools. But it was not until Miss Thompson, the
principal of the Girls' High School, had arrived that the figure was
removed.

"How could those boys have been so mean!" exclaimed Grace to her three
friends just before the gong sounded. "They might have known what would
happen."

There was an ominous quiet in the various class rooms all morning; but
nothing was said or done to indicate just when the storm would burst.
When the first class in algebra met, Anne trembled with fear, but Miss
Leece, in a robin's egg-blue dress, which offset the angry hue of her
complexion, was apparently too angry to trust herself to look in the
direction of the young girl and the lesson progressed without incident.

However, she was only biding her time.

"Miss Pierson," she said, toward the end of the lesson, in a voice so
rasping as to make the girls fairly shiver, "go to the blackboard and
demonstrate this problem."

Then she read aloud in the same disagreeable voice, the following
difficult problem:

"'Train A starts from Chicago going thirty miles an hour. An hour later
Train B starts from Chicago going thirty-five miles an hour. How far
from Chicago will they be when Train B passes Train A?'"

The girls looked up surprised. The problem was well in advance of what
they had been studying and Miss Leece was really asking Anne to recite
something she had not yet learned.

Anne hardly knew how to reply to the terrible woman who stood glowering
at her as if she would like to crush her to bits.

"I'm sorry," said the girl. "I cannot."

"Miss Nesbit," said the teacher, "will you demonstrate this problem?"

Miriam rose with a little smile of triumph on her face and went to the
blackboard, where she worked out the problem.

"Why, what on earth does the woman mean?" whispered Grace. "Are we
expected to learn lessons we have never been taught and has that horrid
Miriam been studying ahead?"

"I think I must be dreaming," replied Anne, looking sorrowfully at Miss
Leece.

"Miss Pierson," thundered the teacher, "you are aware, I believe, that I
permit no conversation in this class. Stupidity and inattention are not
to be supported in any student, and I must ask you to leave the room."

Anne rose in a dazed sort of way, looking very small and shabby as she
left the room.

But Miss Leece was not to come off so easily in the fight, and Anne had
a splendid champion in Grace Harlowe, who could not endure injustice and
was fearless