gathered in the Dowager's study for coffee and conversation, and the
girls presumably wrote letters home. But that night, the South Corridor
followed no such peaceful occupation. Margarite McCoy experienced a
reversion to type. In her own picturesque language, she "shot up the
town."

The echoes of the orgie at last reached the kaffee klatsch below. Miss
Lord came to investigate--and she came on her tiptoes.

Miss McCoy, arrayed in a sometime picture hat cocked over one ear, a
short gymnasium skirt, scarlet stockings and a scarlet sash, was mounted
upon a table, giving an imitation of a clog dance in a mining-camp,
while her audience played rag-time on combs and clapped.

"Margarite! Get down!" someone suddenly warned in frightened tones above
the uproar.

"You needn't call me Margarite. I'm Kid McCoy of Cripple Creek."

Her eye caught sight of Miss Lord towering above the heads crowded in
the doorway and she quite suddenly climbed down. For once, Miss Lord was
without words. She stared for a space of three minutes; finally, she
managed to articulate:

"Sunday evening in a Church school!"

The audience dispersed, and Miss Lord and Miss McCoy remained alone.
Rosalie fled to the farthermost reaches of Paradise Alley and discussed
possible punishments with Patty and Conny for a trembling hour.
"Lights-out" had rung before she summoned courage to steal back to the
darkened South Corridor. The sound of smothered sobbing came from
Margarite's bed. Rosalie sank down on her knees and put her arm around
her room-mate. The sobbing ceased while Margarite rigidly held her
breath.

"Kid," she comforted, "don't mind Lordie--she's a horrid, snooping old
thing! What did she say?"

"I'm not to leave bounds for a month, have to learn five psalms by heart
and take f-fifty demerits."

"Fifty! It's a perfect shame! You'll never work them off. She had no
_right_ to make a fuss when you'd been good so long."

"I don't care!" said Kid, fiercely, as she struggled to free herself
from Rosalie's embrace. "She'll never have a chance again to call me her
sweet little daughter."

X

Onions and Orchids

"The perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."

Patty dreamily assured herself of this important truth for the twentieth
time, as she sat by the open schoolroom window, her eyes on the
billowing whiteness of the cherry tree which had burst into blossom
overnight.

It was particularly necessary that