heard such a word before."

"They're all new words," grumbled Gwennie Rogers.

"We've never had such difficult dictation," whined Jean Hawley.

"Nonsense! Go on," commanded Lesbia.

"You're using the wrong part of the reading-book," squeaked an indignant
voice from Row 2. "Miss Edwards always gives us our dictation from the
beginning part."

"It doesn't matter!"

"Oh, but it _does_ matter!" protested several urgent voices. "The book's
graded, and we've not got to such long words yet. We don't know how to
spell them!"

"Well, you'll have to try to-day," insisted Lesbia, who did not intend
to be corrected by her form. "You must just get along as best you can."

"'After pre-lim-in-ary ex-plor-ations he reached Khar-toum and organized
his ex-pe-dition to the Great White Nile.'"

Sixteen sulky girls, feeling they had a real grievance, wrote down the
unaccustomed words, with an ostentatious accompaniment of shrugging of
shoulders, tapping of foreheads, nibbling of pen-holders, and other
signals of mental distress.

"If we all get bad marks for dictation it won't be _our_ faults,"
remarked Edie Browne in injured tones.

"You'll get a mark for bad conduct if you speak again!" snapped Lesbia.

For a moment or two there was silence, only broken by the sound of
scratching pens. Then again came a piping voice.

"Do blots count? My ink's so thick it's made three smudges."

"Be as careful as you can," temporized Lesbia.

Dorothy sighed gustily, took her ink-pot out of its well, inspected it,
stirred it up with her pen, and placed it on the top of her desk. At the
very next dip she upset it, and its contents spread in a black stream
over her exercise-book.

"_Dor_-othy!"

Lesbia's voice rose to crescendo at the spectacle of the delinquent, her
sleeves soaked in ink, trying to dab up the mess with a morsel of
blotting-paper and a pink-edged pocket handkerchief. She hastily came to
the rescue with the duster from the blackboard, which dispersed a shower
of chalk over the already injured costume of her maladroit pupil.

"Go and wash your hands at once!" she ordered, replacing the now empty
ink-pot in its well, and putting the exercise-book to dry by the fire.
"I'm astonished at such carelessness!"

Dorothy obeyed with something very like a surreptitious wink at her
comrades. The form regarded her with an expression almost approaching
admiration. One would judge the unspoken thought of each to be: "Why did
not _I_