you can't behave yourselves I shall
have to fetch Miss Ormerod."

There is an old fable of a mother who threatened to throw her baby to
the wolves if it cried again, and of an intelligent wolf who, hearing
further squalls and running up eager for the feast, was much disgusted
at being beaten away with a broom. It is seldom we like to be taken
quite at our word. As a matter of fact, Lesbia looked as blank as her
pupils when, at that exact moment, the door opened to admit the
principal.

"There's a great deal of noise in here," remarked Miss Ormerod, which
was hardly a correct statement, for her entrance had produced an
instant and ghastly silence.

Lesbia, blushing and confused, explained the cause of the disturbance,
showing the remains of the queen wasp as proof.

"I'm astonished at your making such an absurd fuss," frowned Miss
Ormerod at the form. "Now, let me see how quietly you can get along with
your work. Please go on," nodding to Lesbia.

To see Miss Ormerod sitting down on the teacher's chair, evidently
intending to stop and listen, gave poor Lesbia what she afterwards
described as "umpteen spasms". To deliver a lesson under the eye of the
Principal was an ordeal for any junior assistant mistress even if she
were well prepared. And, alas! Lesbia was not prepared at all. She had
been busy with her own Latin and botany the night before, and had
trusted to luck to get through the geography class with IIB. She was
supposed to be teaching them the natural features of France, so she
hurriedly drew an outline of that country upon the blackboard, and
commenced to mark in the principal mountains and rivers, aided by
stealthy glances at the map. She knew their general direction, but in
her embarrassment she could not remember their names, and the book--on
which she had pinned her trust--was in Miss Ormerod's hand.

Now it was a canon of the school that mistresses should have their own
subjects at their finger-ends, and teach their lessons in the form of
lectures, without constant reference to notes. By all good rights Lesbia
ought to have been able to reel off the physical features of France as
easily as she could repeat the multiplication table, but her wretched
memory was an absolute blank. The sight of Miss Ormerod sitting there
and directing what seemed the full telescopic power of her spectacles
upon the blackboard, wiped away any fragments of knowledge which
lingered in her agitated brain. She flushed and fa