Down upon her closet floor.
She may pray with both her flippers,
But she'll never use them more!"

CHAPTER VIII.

BY MOONLIGHT.

The time went quickly enough at Miss Russell's. Once the routine
established, lesson followed lesson and day followed day with amazing
rapidity. Before Peggy could realise that she was fairly settled, a
month had passed. It was not so bad now; in fact, a good deal of it was
very pleasant, she was obliged to admit. Her geometry was a constantly
progressing joy; so was her anatomy, and she had the happy consciousness
that she was doing well in both studies. This enabled her to bear up
against the bitterness of rhetoric and of Miss Pugsley. As for the
history, once equally dreaded, its terrors had nearly vanished. Miss
Cortlandt had a way of making things so clear that one could not help
remembering them once they were explained. Furthermore, she managed to
invest the lay-figures of dead and gone kings and conquerors with life
and motion. Alexander the Great was no longer a tiresome person in a
book, who cried in an absurd way when there was nothing left to conquer.
That had always exasperated Peggy, "because if he had had any sense, he
would have gone on, and found out for himself what a lot more there was,
that his old books and seers and things had never found out." But now,
she found Alexander in the first place a boy who knew about horses,
which in itself was a great thing, and in the second place a man who
knew about a great many other things, and who acted on his knowledge in
a variety of swift and surprising ways. As with this hero, so with
others, till Peggy came to look forward, actually, to the history hour;
which shows what a teacher can do when she understands her girls, and
knows enough to call Plutarch and his peers (if any!) to aid her in her
task.

But when all was said and done, Peggy was not cut out for a student; and
her happiest hours were not those of even the pleasantest class-room.
Basket-ball claimed her for its own, and she proved an apt and ready
learner in this branch of study. Less swift than Grace Wolfe, who seemed
a thing compact of steel and gossamer, she was far stronger to meet an
attack, and many a rush came and passed, and left the stalwart freshman
standing steady and undaunted in her place.

The hours of sport brought the two girls nearer and nearer together; and
Peggy found herself yielding more and more--often aga