number of
girls here. To be invited to stay to tea at Miss Georgiana's was the
height of every girl's ambition who belonged in Number Six.

Nor did the girls when graduated, easily forget Miss Georgiana. She had
their confidence and some of them came to her with troubles and
perplexities that they could have exposed to nobody else.

Of course, girls who had "understanding" mothers, did not need this
special inspiration and help, but it was noticeable that girls who had
no mothers at all, found in the little, plump, rather dowdy "old maid
school teacher" one of those choice souls that God has put on earth to
fulfil the duties of parents taken away.

Miss Georgiana Shipman had been teaching for twenty years, but she had
never grown old. And her influence was--to use a trite description--like
a stone flung into a still pool of water; the ever widening circles set
moving by it lapped the very outer shores of Milton life.

Of course Agnes Kenway was bound to fall in love with this teacher; and
Miss Georgiana soon knew her for just the "stormy petrel" that she was.
Agnes gravitated to scrapes as naturally as she breathed, but she got
out of them, too, as a usual thing without suffering any serious harm.

Trix Severn annoyed her. Trix had it in her power to bother the next to
the oldest Corner House girl, sitting as she did at the nearest desk.
The custom was, in verbal recitation, for the pupil to rise in her (or
his) seat and recite. When it came Agnes' time to recite, Trix would
whisper something entirely irrelevant to the matter before the class.

This sibilant monologue was so nicely attuned by Trix that Miss
Georgiana (nor many of the girls besides Agnes herself) did not hear it.
But it got on Agnes' nerves and one afternoon, before the first week of
school was over, she turned suddenly on the demure Trix in the middle of
her recitation and exclaimed, hysterically:

"If you don't stop whispering that way, Trix Severn, I'll just go mad!"

"Agnes!" ejaculated Miss Shipman. "What does this mean?"

"I don't care!" cried Agnes, stormily. "She interrupts me----"

"Didn't either!" declared Trix, thereby disproving her own statement in
that particular case, at least. "I didn't speak to her."

"You did!" insisted Agnes.

"Agnes! sit down," said Miss Shipman, and sternly enough, for the whole
room was disturbed. "What _were_ you doing, Beatrice?"

"Just studying, Miss Shipman," declared Trix, with perfect innocence.