pairs of eyes gazed beyond Miss Jellings' head--across ropes and
rings and parallel bars--toward the green tree tops and the blue sky;
and twenty girls, for that brief hour, regretted their past badnesses.

Miss Jellings herself seemed to be a bit on edge. She snapped out her
orders with a curtness that brought a jerkily quick response from forty
waving Indian clubs. As she stood straight and slim in her gymnasium
suit, her cheeks flushed with exercise, she looked quite as young as any
of her pupils. But if she appeared young, she also appeared determined.
No instructor in the school, not even Miss Lord in Latin, kept stricter
discipline.

"One, two, three, four--Patty Wyatt! Keep your eyes to the front. It
isn't necessary for you to watch the clock. I shall dismiss the class
when I am ready. Over your heads. One, two, three, four." Finally, when
nerves were almost at the breaking point, came the grateful order,
"Attention! Right about face. March. Clubs in racks. Double quick. Halt.
Break ranks."

With a relieved whoop, the class dispersed.

"Thank heaven, there's only one more week of it!" Patty breathed, as
they regained their own quarters in Paradise Alley.

"Good-by to Gym forever!" Conny waved a slipper over her head. "Hooray!"

"Isn't Jelly awful?" Patty demanded, still smarting from the recent
insult. "She never used to be so bad. What on earth has got into her?"

"She is pretty snappy," Priscilla agreed. "But I like her just the same.
She's so--so sort of _spirited_, you know--like a skittish horse."

"Urn," growled Patty. "I'd like to see a good, big, husky man get the
upper hand of Jelly once, and _just make her toe the mark_!"

"You two will have to hurry," Priscilla warned, "if you want to get into
your costumes up here. Martin starts in half an hour."

"We'll be ready!" Patty was already plunging her face into an inky
mixture in the wash bowl.

The fancy-dress lawn fete, which St. Ursula's School held on the last
Friday in every May, had occurred the evening before; and this afternoon
the girls were redonning their costumes to make a trip to the village
photographer's. The complicated costumes, that required time and space
for their proper adjustment, were to be assumed at the school and driven
down in the hearse. Those more simple of arrangement were to go in the
trolley car, and be donned in the cramped quarters of the gallery
dressing-room.

Patty and Conny, whose make-up was a very delica