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per, and then, gathering up pens and pencils, marched slowly into the dreaded room. It was shaped like an amphitheatre, with a railed-in platform at one side, and sloping seats descending all round. "It's like the operating theatre at a hospital! Oh my! and don't I feel as if I were going to be cut up too!" groaned Dorothy, as she filed along in front of a seat, looking for her place. At a distance of every two or three yards the desks were marked with a number, in front of which was a supply of blotting and writing paper. Some of the candidates made out their own number at once, others went roaming helplessly about, and Rhoda found herself perched in the furthest corner, far from her companions. She looked across and received Dorothy's smiling nod, but Kathleen's face was set in stern anxiety, and the others were too busy arranging papers to remember her existence. The Examiner, in cap and gown, stood on the platform, talking to the lady secretary of the Centre. She made a remark, and he smiled, and said something in reply at which they both laughed audibly. It shocked Rhoda in much the same way as it would have done to hear a chief mourner laugh at a funeral. Such levity was most unseemly, yet on the other hand the pictures on the walls were surely unnecessarily depressing! They were oil-coloured portraits of departed worthies, at that gloomy stage of decay when frame, figure, and background have acquired the same dirty hue, and the paint has cracked in a hundred broken lines. One old gentleman--the ugliest of all--faced Rhoda as she sat, and stared at her with a mocking gaze, which seemed to say: "You think you are going to pass in arithmetic, do you? Wait until you see the paper! _You'll_ be surprised--!" It was a relief to turn to the paper itself and know the worst, which seemed very bad indeed. She glanced from question to question, feeling despair deepen at the sight of such phrases as--"Simplify the expression"; "debenture stock at 140 1/8"; "at what rate per cent.?" etcetera, etcetera. In the present condition of mind and body it was an effort to recall the multiplication table, not to speak of difficult and elaborate calculations. Poor Rhoda! She dipped her pen into the ink, and wrote the headline to her paper, hesitated for a moment, added "Question A," and then it seemed as if she could do no more. The figures danced before her eyes, her knees shook, her hands were so petrified with co
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