red.

"No, thanks to you! but for an hour and forty minutes, at any rate."

"We must all have failed hopelessly; not a single one of us can possibly
have scraped through."

"Yes; but it would have been worse still if we had gone on missing for
other twenty minutes."

"Rather! Miss Drummond will be quite cross enough as it is, when she
looks at the register."

The girls judged it discreet not to go indoors too soon for lunch,
waiting until the pantry was likely to be full, lest their early
appearance might excite comment.

Singing was from ten minutes past eleven to twelve, and after that came
science, with Miss Drummond, until one, both classes being held in the
lecture-hall, so that there was no further lesson with Miss Webb that
morning. A hockey match was played in the afternoon, which caused such
excitement that the affair of the clock was forgotten for the time
being; but it returned only too forcibly to the girls' minds, as they
walked in to evening preparation. Would Miss Webb have found out the
trick played upon her? And what steps would she take? They could not
suppose that she would submit tamely, and ignore the whole circumstance.
The most poor-spirited governess expects to keep her pupils in their
classroom during school hours, even though she may not be able to
exercise control over them while they are there. Would she show herself
to be angry? or, worse still, would she report the matter to Miss
Drummond? If so, trouble was in store for them.

Miss Webb, to their surprise, did neither. Her line of conduct was
totally unexpected. She announced, quite calmly and briefly:

"I find that a mistake was made this morning in the time, and that you
lost twenty minutes of your examination. By noting your marks during the
ten minutes we spent on Roman history, I have been able to calculate the
general average that you would have received during the entire
half-hour, and, as a result, I have added one right answer and eight
misses to each of your names on the register, and ten extra misses to
Aldred Laurence, in lieu of forfeits."

The girls groaned inwardly, but they knew they were checkmated. If they
dared to remonstrate, Miss Webb would probably expose the entire episode
to Miss Drummond, so they wisely said nothing.

They certainly well deserved all they had received, particularly Aldred,
who for once had been a little too clever. Her additional bad marks
placed her at the bottom of the list, a positio