per, and then, gathering up pens and pencils, marched
slowly into the dreaded room. It was shaped like an amphitheatre, with
a railed-in platform at one side, and sloping seats descending all
round.

"It's like the operating theatre at a hospital! Oh my! and don't I feel
as if I were going to be cut up too!" groaned Dorothy, as she filed
along in front of a seat, looking for her place. At a distance of every
two or three yards the desks were marked with a number, in front of
which was a supply of blotting and writing paper. Some of the
candidates made out their own number at once, others went roaming
helplessly about, and Rhoda found herself perched in the furthest
corner, far from her companions. She looked across and received
Dorothy's smiling nod, but Kathleen's face was set in stern anxiety, and
the others were too busy arranging papers to remember her existence.
The Examiner, in cap and gown, stood on the platform, talking to the
lady secretary of the Centre. She made a remark, and he smiled, and
said something in reply at which they both laughed audibly. It shocked
Rhoda in much the same way as it would have done to hear a chief mourner
laugh at a funeral. Such levity was most unseemly, yet on the other
hand the pictures on the walls were surely unnecessarily depressing!
They were oil-coloured portraits of departed worthies, at that gloomy
stage of decay when frame, figure, and background have acquired the same
dirty hue, and the paint has cracked in a hundred broken lines. One old
gentleman--the ugliest of all--faced Rhoda as she sat, and stared at her
with a mocking gaze, which seemed to say:

"You think you are going to pass in arithmetic, do you? Wait until you
see the paper! _You'll_ be surprised--!"

It was a relief to turn to the paper itself and know the worst, which
seemed very bad indeed. She glanced from question to question, feeling
despair deepen at the sight of such phrases as--"Simplify the
expression"; "debenture stock at 140 1/8"; "at what rate per cent.?"
etcetera, etcetera. In the present condition of mind and body it was an
effort to recall the multiplication table, not to speak of difficult and
elaborate calculations. Poor Rhoda! She dipped her pen into the ink,
and wrote the headline to her paper, hesitated for a moment, added
"Question A," and then it seemed as if she could do no more. The
figures danced before her eyes, her knees shook, her hands were so
petrified with co