rly well the school toilets of these young lady pupils. The boys wore
overalls and flannel shirts, which, in contrast to the sketchy effects of
their sisters' costumes, seemed almost modish. Mrs. Yellett then left the
"class-room," saying she must take Ben's place with the sheep.

The Brobdingnags, huge of stature, sinister of aspect, deeply distrustful
of the rites in which they were about to participate, closed in about
their teacher. From the pigeon-holes of memory Mary drew forth the
academic smile with which a certain teacher of hers had invariably opened
school. The pupils greeted the academic smile with obvious suspicion. No
one smiled in camp. When anything according with their conception of the
humorous happened, they laughed uproariously. Thus, early in the morning,
on his way to breakfast, Ned had stumbled over an ax and severely cut his
head. Every one but Ned saw the point of this joke immediately, and hearty
guffaws testified to their appreciation.

Miss Carmichael took her place behind the upturned tub.

"Will you please be seated?" she said.

The class complied with the instantaneous precision of automata newly
greased and in excellent working order. Their abrupt obedience was
disconcerting. Some one must have been drilling them, thought their
anxious teacher, in the art of simultaneous squatting. The temper of the
class respecting scholastic deportment leaned towards rigidity bordering
on self-torture.

Mary made out a roll-call, and by unanimous consent it was agreed to
arrange the class as it then stood, or rather squatted, with the Herculean
Ben at the top, and gradually diminishing in size till it reached the
vanishing point with Cacta, who was ten and the least terrifying of all.

"And now," ventured the teacher, with the courage of a white rabbit, "what
have you been in the habit of studying?"

Absolute silence on the part of the class, which confronted its questioner
straight as a row of bottles, presenting faces imperturbable as so many
sphinxes.

Other questions met with an equally disheartening response. Miss
Carmichael sat up straight, pushed back the persistent curls from her
face, and bent every energy towards the achievement of a "firm" demeanor.

"Clematis," said she, wisely selecting perhaps the least formidable of the
class, "I want you to give me some idea of the kind of work you have been
doing, so that we may all be able to understand each other. Now, in your
mathematics, fo