or the great occasion. The girls
one by one had approached the piano and played each her trial piece and
had sung her trial song, and still it seemed to everyone that Kitty led
the van; for her music, although not quite so showy and brilliant as
Florence's, was marked with true musical expression, and her song, a
sweet old English ballad, came purely and freely from her young lips.

Mary also acquitted herself extremely well in the musical examination,
and old Mr. Bateman raised his head and listened with real pleasure as
the wild warbling notes of "Annie Laurie" sounded through the old hall.

But at last the supreme test of all arrived. The three girls, Sir John
leading the way, approached the central dais. There they stood side by
side, their soft Greek draperies falling round their slim young
figures. Sir John then stepped to the front and addressed the crowd of
eager spectators.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I need not tell you with what intense
pleasure I have listened to the spirited answers our three young
friends have made to the different questions put to them. The
Scholarship, however, has yet to be won--the supreme test is now to be
given--the trial essays are now to be read. In order that fair play
should above all things be exercised on this important occasion, I have
asked my three young friends not to sign their names to the essays they
have written. The essays are in three blank envelopes, which now lie
before me on the table." Here Sir John touched three envelopes with
his hand. "I will proceed to read them aloud, taking them up
haphazard, and having no idea myself who the writer of each essay is.
I have selected as the subject of the test essay the great and
wonderful subject of Heroism, for I feel that such a theme will give
scope for the real mind, the real heart, the real soul of the young
writer. I will say no more now. After I have read the essays we will
retire into the outer hall for two or three minutes, and on our return
I shall have the pleasure of declaring on whose head I am to place the
crown of bay-leaves."

Sir John paused for a moment, the girls stood close together, they
faced the crowd standing at one side of the dais. Florence glanced
across the hall. Once again she met her mother's eyes--she saw no one
in that intense moment of her young life except the little Mummy, and
the love in her mother's eyes once again made her say to herself,
"Nothing, nothing, nothin