ion almost made amends to Marion
for Miss Palmer's brief dismissal; almost, not quite, for, in common
with nine-tenths of the scholars in the academy, Marion "hated
mathematics."

Miss Sausmann tried her on the pronunciation of a few German
gutturals, then patted her on the shoulder and said,--

"Marrione, you vill do vell; you may koom: I vill be most gladness to
'ave you koom. I vill give unto you one, two, three private lessons.
You may koom to-day, at four. The stupid class vill not smile at you;
you vill make no mistakens." Then she kissed Marion as affectionately
as if she had been a dear old friend, and watched her as she went down
the long corridor. Some words she said to herself in German, smiled
pleasantly, waved two little hands after the retreating figure, and
smiled again, this time with some self-congratulatory shakes of the
head.

The truth was, though German was an elective study, it was by no means
a favorite in the school, and, it may be, Miss Sausmann was not a
popular teacher. Broken English, too great an affection for, and
estimation of the grandeur of, the Fatherland, joined with a quick
temper, do not always make a successful teacher.

The girls, moreover, had fallen rather into the habit of making fun of
her, and this did not add to her happiness. In Marion she thought she
saw a friend, and very welcome she was.

The arrangement that put four scholars in one room for study, also was
not the wisest on the part of the architect of Montrose Academy. If he
had taught school for even one year, he would have found how easy it
was for a restless scholar to destroy the quiet so essential to all
true work.

In Marion's room there was not a stupid or a lazy girl; but they
committed their lessons at such different times, and in such different
ways, that they often proved the greatest annoyance to each other.

One of the first obstacles Marion found as she bent herself to real
hard work, was the need of a place where her attention was not
continually called from her book to something one of her room-mates
was doing or saying.

To be sure, it was one of the rules of the school that there should be
perfect quiet in the room during study hours, but that was absolutely
impossible; and Marion, especially with her mathematics, found herself
struggling to keep her thoughts upon her lesson, until she grew so
nervous that she could not tell _x_ from _y_, or demonstrate the most
common proposition in an int