said Agatha, with signs of agitation.

"In what way?"

"In every way. I am expected to be something more than mortal. Everyone
else is encouraged to complain, and to be weak and silly. But I must
have no feeling. I must be always in the right. Everyone else may be
home-sick, or huffed, or in low spirits. I must have no nerves, and must
keep others laughing all day long. Everyone else may sulk when a word
of reproach is addressed to them, and may make the professors afraid to
find fault with them. I have to bear with the insults of teachers who
have less self-control than I, a girl of seventeen! and must coax
them out of the difficulties they make for themselves by their own ill
temper."

"But, Agatha--"

"Oh, I know I am talking nonsense, Miss Wilson; but can you expect me to
be always sensible--to be infallible?"

"Yes, Agatha; I do not think it is too much to expect you to be always
sensible; and--"

"Then you have neither sense nor sympathy yourself," said Agatha.

There was an awful pause. Neither could have told how long it lasted.
Then Agatha, feeling that she must do or say something desperate, or
else fly, made a distracted gesture and ran out of the room.

She rejoined her companions in the great hall of the mansion, where
they were assembled after study for "recreation," a noisy process which
always set in spontaneously when the professors withdrew. She usually
sat with her two favorite associates on a high window seat near the
hearth. That place was now occupied by a little girl with flaxen hair,
whom Agatha, regardless of moral force, lifted by the shoulders and
deposited on the floor. Then she sat down and said:

"Oh, such a piece of news!"

Miss Carpenter opened her eyes eagerly. Gertrude Lindsay affected
indifference.

"Someone is going to be expelled," said Agatha.

"Expelled! Who?"

"You will know soon enough, Jane," replied Agatha, suddenly grave. "It
is someone who made an impudent entry in the Recording Angel."

Fear stole upon Jane, and she became very red. "Agatha," she said, "it
was you who told me what to write. You know you did, and you can't deny
it."

"I can't deny it, can't I? I am ready to swear that I never dictated a
word to you in my life."

"Gertrude knows you did," exclaimed Jane, appalled, and almost in tears.

"There," said Agatha, petting her as if she were a vast baby. "It shall
not be expelled, so it shan't. Have you seen the Recording Angel lately,
either o