"You didn't even know
it was Miss Farrar's birthday before we mentioned it."

"And yet you calmly took all the credit, and made yourself the
mouthpiece of the class!" exclaimed the equally indignant Maisie.

"I suppose I had as good a right as anybody else to offer
congratulations," laughed Flossie. "You should have brought yours out a
little quicker."

Flossie might be appreciated by her cousins, the Hammond-Smiths, and
their particular friends, the Lawsons and the Palmers, but she was
certainly not a favourite in her own Form. Nearly everybody had a
squabble with her upon some pretext. Even Janie Henderson, whose
retiring disposition involved her in few disputes with her
schoolfellows, found a cause for complaint. It was one of the ordinary
regulations that the girls should each take the office of warden for a
week in turn, the duties being to give out any necessary books, clean
the blackboard, distribute fresh pens and blotting-paper, and collect
any articles that might be left in the room after lesson hours. By
general custom all pencils, india-rubbers, or other stray possessions
were put into what was known as the forfeit tray, whence their owners
might reclaim them by paying the penalty of the loss of an order mark.
Each girl had her pencil-box, in which she was expected to keep her own
property; but many things were usually left lying about, and the warden
always made a careful search at one o'clock.

The most cherished object in Janie's desk was a little, pearl-handled
penknife, which she greatly valued. She guarded it zealously, lending
it as seldom as she could, and taking good care that it was always
returned to her immediately. One unfortunate day, however, she had been
sharpening her pencil at the close of the arithmetic lesson, and in the
preoccupation of correcting her answers she laid her treasure down, and
forgot all about it. She remembered it after dinner, and ran back to
the schoolroom to rescue it, but it was nowhere to be found.

"It must have been put in the forfeit tray," she said to herself. "I
shall get it to-morrow, though it will cost me an order mark, worse
luck!"

She looked eagerly next morning when Miss Farrar produced the tray, but
her penknife was not among the lost property. She made a few enquiries
in the class, but nobody professed to have seen it, and she was obliged
to abandon it as hopelessly gone.

It must have been quite a week after this that one evening, when the
St.