er; and as she did not refer to the subject afterwards, the girls
felt doubtful whether their little mutiny had been quite so effective as
they had meant it to be.

"I wish Miss Rowe wasn't so horribly particular," said Avis, tidying her
possessions ruefully a few days afterwards. "She says she's going to
look at all our desks this afternoon, and give forfeits for any that are
in a muddle. I haven't rummaged to the back of mine for ever so long. I
scarcely know what's in it. Why, what's this? It's actually a box of
fusees. I remember now, I brought them from home. I'd quite forgotten I
had them."

"Oh, do give them to me!" cried Enid. "They make such a lovely hissing
noise, I like to hear them go off."

"You'd better not strike them in class, then," replied Avis.

"Do you dare me to?"

"Why, even you wouldn't do such a risky thing!"

"Oh! What would Miss Rowe say if you did it in the very middle of
Euclid?" said Cissie Gardiner, with round eyes of delighted horror.

"Then I will, just to show you I dare. I'm not afraid of Miss Rowe!"
declared Enid, appropriating the box and putting it in her pocket.

The girls laughed, not believing for a moment that she really intended
to carry out her threat. The bell rang, Miss Rowe entered, and lessons
began before they had time to say anything more about it. Euclid was not
a favourite subject with the Upper Fourth. It was considered dry, and
the half-hour devoted to it was regarded as more or less of a penance.
In the very middle of the fifth proposition, when Miss Rowe had changed
the letters on the blackboard, and was endeavouring to make Vera
Clifford grasp the principle of the reasoning, instead of merely
repeating the problem by rote, Enid's head was bent low over her desk,
and her fingers appeared to be busy with something.

"Y G K = D F O," droned Vera in a melancholy voice.

Suddenly there was a striking sound, and a loud, long hiss.

"Oh! oh! oh!" came in a subdued chorus from all sides.

"Enid, what are you doing?" cried Miss Rowe, sharply.

For answer naughty Enid held up the hissing fusee in a kind of daring
triumph, but as she raised her head her long curly hair, which was
floating loose, brushed against the burning spark, and in an instant
blazed up, setting fire also to the sleeve of her thin lawn blouse. With
a wild shriek she dropped the fusee, and, springing from her seat,
would have tried in her terror to rush from the room had she not been
prevent