er amazed and indignant parent.

"Olympic nonsense," he grunted. "We don't want an extra halfpenny on the
rates. I don't know what the present generation is coming to. In my
young days we played on the meadows by the river and never bothered our
heads about trophies. The Education Committee gives a prize or two for
book learning, and quite right too, but the City Council would see the
children at Jericho before it offered them rewards for playing. Stick to
your lessons, child; they're quite enough to keep you busy, I'm sure.
Your last report wasn't up to much, so far as I remember."

"Of course Dad's rather out-of-date," commented Ermie, reporting the
interview to an elect circle in VA. "I told him Miss Tatham said 'the
physical side of education is as necessary as the mental', but I
couldn't get him to see it. He was quite raggy, and jammed the lid on
the bacon dish, and told me to get on with my breakfast and not talk any
more rubbish. So there you are. What can you do, even if your father
_is_ on the City Council?"

"It's hopeless," agreed Calla, with a gusty sigh.

"Put not your trust in corporations," grunted Kathleen gloomily. "I do
think the town might do something for us schoolgirls."

It was on the third day after this rebuff that Lizzie Logan covered
herself with glory. Lizzie Logan, of all people in the world, the shyest
girl in the form, an absolute retiring young she-hermit, who always
blushed crimson when she had to answer a question, and generally
scuttled out of the dressing-room in a hurry as if she did not want to
walk home with anybody else, and looked scared to death if she was asked
to join a game in the gymnasium. She came into school one morning
carrying a local newspaper, and, after reddening up to the very roots of
her hair and down to the margin of her V-shaped blouse, she handed it to
Marjorie, murmuring something utterly unintelligible.

"Hello, old sport! What's this for?" demanded Marjorie, opening it at a
large advertisement of face powder. "Nothing doing here, thanks! I
haven't gone in for titivating my complexion yet. You'll have to be
content with me as nature made me. _What_ do you say? An advertisement?
Why can't you speak up? Show it to me, then! Oh, _I say_! Girls, just
look here! What do you think of this?"

A circle at once crowded round Marjorie, peeping over her shoulder.
Others, on the outer limit, denied a sight of the paper, demanded
explanation.

So Marjorie read th