noisy
flood of tears, of course the sympathy of all the girls going with
her. Miss Barton was pale, and there were tears in her eyes; but no
one noticed her, unless it was to throw toward her disapproving
looks.

The fact was, that she had spoken to Maria again and again, kindly and
in private, about this same piece of ill-manners, and the girl had
paid no heed to it. There seemed nothing to be left to her but the
public rebuke, which, wounding, might cure.

Marion took the whole in wonderingly. Was this, then, considered a
part of that education for which purpose what seemed to her such a
wealth of treasures had been gathered?

Here were lectures, libraries, art galleries, beautiful grounds,
excellent teachers, a bevy of happy companions, and yet among them so
small a thing as a girl's handling cake at the table, and choosing the
largest and the best piece, was made a matter of comment and reproof,
and, for the first time since she had been in the academy, had raised
a little storm of rebellion on the part of pupils towards a teacher.

When she went to her room, Susan had already told the others, who sat
at different tables, what had happened. Susan was excited and angry,
but Dorothy said quietly,--

"And why should Maria have taken the best bit of cake, even if it had
been on the top? I wouldn't."

"No: you would have been the last girl in the school to take the best
of anything," said Gladys, giving Dorothy a hug and a kiss; "and as
for Miss Barton, she's a dear, anyway, and I dare say she feels at
this moment twice as bad as Maria."

"Sensible girl, am I not, Marion?" seeing Marion come into the room.
"Don't you take sides in any such things; you mind what I say!
Teachers know what they are doing; and if any of us are reproved, why,
the long and short of it is, nine times out of ten we deserve it. It's
'for the improvement of our characters' that everything is done
here."

"I believe you," said Marion heartily; and, trifling as the event was,
she put it with the long array of educational advantages which she had
come from the far West to seek. "It requires attention to little as
well as great things"--she thought, wisely for a girl of sixteen--"to
accomplish the object of this finishing-school."

CHAPTER VIII.

DEMOSTHENIC CLUB.

"Well! what of that! If college boys can have secret societies, and
the Faculties, to say the least, wink at them, why can't academy
girls? I don't see!"

This is