own fault, if you will be so clumsy!" said Beatrice. "Come
indoors, and I'll tie it up for you. You'd better hold it under the
cold-water tap first."

Gwen groaned in spirit as she went to bed that night.

"I shall never hear the last of that wretched fifteen shillings!" she
thought "I feel like Mr. Caudle in the _Curtain Lectures_, when he'd
lent a five-pound note to a friend. That money of mine was to have
bought Christmas presents, and boots for Johnnie Cass, and a new
tennis racket, and paid for the swimming, and I don't know what else,
according to my family's ideas. Oh, dear! Being poor's a hateful
business! I wish Dad were Archbishop of Canterbury, instead of only
Curate-in-charge of Skelwick Bay!"

CHAPTER XIV

Gwen meets Trouble

"There's a sickening author called Virgil,
Don't I wish I were chanting his dirge--ill!
As a door-nail he's dead
Yet his works live instead,
And to me they're a regular scourge--ill!"

So sang Netta, banging down her copy of _AEneid I_ and _II_ with a
force that almost dissevered its cover and made the desk ring.

"I call it absolute sickening nonsense," she continued energetically.
"Why in the name of all common sense should we girls in this modern
twentieth century be expected to bother our precious heads over
antiquated old rubbish that would be far better consigned to decent
burial? What's the use of it, I want to know?"

"'An admirable training for the intellect', my dear! to quote
Thistles," said Annie Edwards. "According to her theory you ought to
feel your mind sprouting at every fresh page, and sending out shoots
of wisdom."

"Sprouting, indeed! Just the other way!" grunted Netta. "Latin has a
paralysing effect upon my brain. Instead of sharpening me it deadens
my faculties. When I've been trying to construe a page of Virgil, my
intellect feels a pulp."

"Then the obvious moral is, don't try!" yawned Millicent Cooper.

"I don't."

"No more you do, you old slacker!"

"Why should one try when one can scrape through without?"

"Not an easy thing if Thistles puts you on a difficult bit! Have you
made any sense out of this part? It's uncommonly stiff."

"Not I--I shall throw myself as usual on Gwen's mercy. Come here,
Gwendolen mine, that's a sweet angelic cherub, and interpret these
abominable lines!"

Gwen came rather reluctantly. Of late Netta had grown into the habit
of applying to her for help with her extremely ill-prepa