not clever
in the sense of having a retentive memory, but she now showed more
brightness in answering questions and her essays were more original.
Miss Pratt, ruthless towards "slackers" or "dullards", slowly relaxed a
tithe of her irony.

"I really believe, Lesbia Ferrars, you're beginning at last to realize
that a human head holds something called a brain," she remarked
pointedly one day. "Many girls seem to think learning is like receiving
a phonographic impression. They reel it off again at exams, with as
little intelligence as a gramophone. We don't want the barrel-piano
style of work in this form. We want cultivated brains that can reason as
well as state facts, not bunglers who haven't the sense to think."

Her pince-nez, which for a wonder had fallen quite approvingly on
Lesbia, glared in the direction of Lizzie Logan.

Poor Lizzie was the champion blunderer of the form, and only the
previous day, in the ambulance lesson, when asked how she would apply
artificial respiration to a part-drowned patient who had broken both his
arms, gasped in utter consternation, and had nervously fluttered forth:
"I should work his legs about," an answer which drew forth an absolute
deluge of scorn from her indignant teacher.

It was Miss Pratt, always anxious to work in the direction of
intellectual uplift, who suggested to Miss Tatham that the school might
get up some private theatricals for the end of the term. She constituted
herself stage-manager, and was licensed to pick her stars from any form
she pleased.

"I don't mind whether I choose seniors or juniors," she announced. "I
want girls who can _act_, not wooden dummies. I shall have test
rehearsals, and reject all those who haven't the proper dramatic fire
about them. Any candidate will have to play up or leave the boards."

The honour of a place in Miss Pratt's "Company" was sufficiently great
to attract many would-be performers, but her standards were strict, and
the elimination process a severe one. Lesbia, mindful of the many
squashings she had received in class, and seeing even Marion Morwood
turned down for incompetence, did not dare to present herself for the
ordeal.

"Miss Pratt would probably only laugh at me and say, 'You! Well really,
who next?'" she confided to Marion.

And Marion, who was suffering from the disappointment of rejection,
agreed with her.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, and there ought to have been a hockey
practice, but the rain had c