s
ten minutes to nine before Bloomah could sit down to her own
breakfast, and then the steaming cup of tea served by her mother was a
terrible hindrance; and if that good woman's head was turned, Bloomah
would sneak towards the improvised sink--which consisted of two dirty
buckets, the one holding the clean water being recognisable by the tin
pot standing on its covering-board--where she would pour half her tea
into the one bucket and fill up from the other.

When this stratagem was impossible, she almost scalded herself in her
gulpy haste. Then how she snatched up her satchel and ran through
rain, or snow, or fog, or scorching sunshine! Yet often she lost her
breath without gaining her mark, and as she cowered tearfully under
the angry eyes of the classroom, a stab at her heart was added to the
stitch in her side.

It made her classmates only the angrier that, despite all her
unpunctuality, she kept a high position in the class, even if she
could never quite attain prize-rank.

But there came a week when Bloomah's family remained astonishingly
quiet and self-sufficient, and it looked as if the Banner might once
again adorn the dry, scholastic room and throw a halo of romance round
the blackboard.

Then a curious calamity befell. A girl who had left the school for
another at the end of the previous week, returned on the Thursday,
explaining that her parents had decided to keep her in the old school.
An indignant heart-cry broke through all the discipline:

'Teacher, don't have her!'

From Bloomah burst the peremptory command: 'Go back, Sarah!'

For the unlucky children felt that her interval would now be reckoned
one of absence. And they were right. Sarah reduced the gross
attendance by six, and the Banner was lost.

Yet to have been so near incited them to a fresh spurt. Again the
tantalizing Thursday was reached before their hopes were dashed. This
time the break-down was even crueller, for every pinafored pupil, not
excluding Bloomah, was in her place, red-marked.

Upon this saintly company burst suddenly Bloomah's mother, who,
ignoring the teacher, and pointing her finger dramatically at her
daughter, cried:

'Bloomah Beckenstein, go home!'

Bloomah's face became one large red mark, at which all the other
girls' eyes were directed. Tears of humiliation and distress dripped
down her cheeks over the dark rings. If she were thus hauled off ere
she had received two hours of secular instruction, her attend