hand! It
was only human nature--"

"I hope," returned the captain of the Fire Brigade icily--"I _hope_ that
is not the spirit in which you propose to go through life. It's a poor
thing if you cannot sacrifice a ten-and-sixpenny quilt in the interest
of the public good." And she stalked majestically from the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

TRIPOS WEEK.

The Tripos week! Every third-year girl felt as if life and death
trembled in the balance during those eventful days. They woke on the
Monday morning with much the same feeling as that of a patient who
expects to have an arm amputated at eleven, and is morally convinced
that she will sink beneath the strain, and when at seven o'clock a
second-year friend crept into the study, tray in hand, and administered
sympathising cups of tea, the final touch was given to the illusion.

Darsie quailed before the prospect of those three-hour papers.
Experience had proved that she was not at her best in examinations;
imaginative people rarely are, since at the critical moment the brain is
apt to wander off on dire excursions into the future, envisaging the
horrors of failing, instead of buckling to work in order to ensure
success. Historical French Grammar in especial loomed like a pall, and
she entered the Mission Room at Saint Columba's with the operation-like
feeling developed to its acutest point.

For several minutes after taking the first paper in her hand Darsie
found it impossible to decipher the words. The type danced mistily
before her eyes; and when at last letters shaped themselves out of the
confusion, the last state was worse than the first, for she was
convinced--drearily, hopelessly convinced--that she could not answer a
single question out of the number.

She laid down the paper, and steadied herself resolutely. All over the
room other girls were sitting on hard, uncomfortable chairs before
tables like her own, some motionless and stunned-looking like herself,
some already setting briskly to work. On the walls, among a number of
quotations, "_Help one another_!" stared her in the face with tragic
significance, and again: "How far high failure overleaps the bounds of
low successes." _Failure_! She lifted the paper again, and decided
with a glimmer of hope that she could answer at least _one_ question,
set to work, and scribbled for life until the last moment of the
prescribed three hours! What exhaustion! What collapse! Positively
one's legs wobbl