tand by each
other. The strong must protect the weak. It's the duty of the rest of
the class to stand by Rosalie."

"Yes, but how?" inquired Priscilla, breaking into the tirade.

"We'll form a Virgil Union, and strike for sixty lines a day."

"Oh!" gasped Rosalie, horrified at the audacity of the suggestion.

"Let's!" cried Conny, rising to the call.

"Do you think we can?" asked Priscilla, dubiously.

"What will Miss Lord say?" Rosalie quavered.

"She can't say anything. Didn't she tell us to listen to the lecture and
apply its teaching?" Patty reminded.

"She'll be delighted to find we have," said Conny.

"But what if she doesn't give in?"

"We'll call out the Cicero and Caesar classes in a sympathetic strike."

"Hooray!" cried Conny.

"Lordy does believe in Unions," Priscilla conceded. "She ought to see
the justice of it."

"Of course she'll see the justice of it," Patty insisted. "We're exactly
like the laundry workers--in the position of dependents, and the only
way we can match strength with our employer, is by standing together. If
Rosalie alone drops back to sixty lines, she'll be flunked; but if the
whole class does, Lordie will _have_ to give in."

"Maybe the whole class won't want to join the union," said Priscilla.

"We'll make 'em!" said Patty. In accordance with Miss Lord's desire, she
had grasped some basic principles.

"We'll have to hurry," she added, glancing at the clock. "Pris, you run
and find Irene and Harriet and Florence Hissop; and Conny, you route out
Nancy Lee--she's up in Evalina Smith's room telling ghost stories. Here,
Rosalie, stop crying and dump the things off those chairs so somebody
can sit down."

Priscilla started obediently, but paused on the threshold.

"And what will you do?" she inquired with meaning.

"I," said Patty, "will be labor leader."

The meeting was convened, and Patty, a self-constituted chairman,
outlined the tenets of the Virgil Union. Sixty lines was to constitute a
working day. The class was to explain the case to Miss Lord at the
regular session on Monday morning, and politely but positively refuse to
read the last twenty lines that had been assigned. If Miss Lord proved
insistent, the girls were to close their books and go out on strike.

The majority of the class, hypnotized by Patty's eloquence, dazedly
accepted the program; but Rosalie, for whose special benefit the union
had been formed, had to be coerced into signing the constitution