his legend:

AUNT ANNE--PIG

After which she felt relieved, and, the five minutes being up, left the
room with such uncompromising hauteur, still splashed with green on the
nose, still split open down the back, with the towel's fringe dangling
in dignity behind, that her aunt again exploded.

[Illustration:
"Left the room with such uncompromising hauteur ... that
her aunt again exploded"]

The fact that she had irretrievably lost one credit through tardiness
set Sissy's lips in a tight line of determination to guard jealously
every one of the ninety-and-nine left to her.

At recess she remained at her desk studying her geography with an
intensity of purpose that made her rivals' hearts quake. She sat at the
teacher's desk--lifted to this almost regal eminence by his fondness for
her petulant ways as well as because of that quality of leadership which
made Sissy her fellows' spokeswoman. Hers was the privilege of using the
master's pencils, sharpened to a fineness that made neatness a
dissipation instead of a task. It was she, of course, who originated the
decorative style of arithmetic-paper much in vogue, on which each
example was penned off in an inclosure fenced by alternating vertical
and horizontal double hyphens.

But a queer, conscientious sense of the responsibilities of power and
place modified Sissy's rapturous delight in her position, so that she
kept it despite a fiercely jealous class-spirit developed by a strict
credit-system, by the emulative temper which the rarefied atmosphere of
the little mining town fostered, and by a young master just out of
college who looked upon his teaching as a temporary adventure, much as
a Japanese gentleman regards domestic service.

It was in her capacity of class representative that the master had
consulted Sissy upon the limits to be observed in the forthcoming public
oral examination in geography. And she had enlightened him as to what
would be considered quite "fair." This treaty, into which she entered
with the seriousness of an ambassador to an unfriendly power arranging a
settlement of a disputed question, had a character so sacred in her eyes
that its violation by the master in the course of the afternoon came
upon her like a blow.

"Cecilia Madigan," asked the master, "what is the highest mountain in
the world?"

Sissy rose. The imposing array of visitors in school faded out of her
horizon. All she could see was the eyes of her school