suddenly, with more
swiftness than grace. Miss Reade and Miss Bardsley were heading the
line, and passing under the upraised hands of Maude Farnham and Rose
Turner, two of the prefects, when unluckily Rose tipped a little too far
forward and lost her balance. Down she came with a crash, and in her
fall she clutched wildly at Miss Bardsley, and not only brought both the
teachers to their knees, but upset six couples who were following close
behind and could not stop. There was quite a tangle of prostrate figures
upon the ice, and much laughter as the girls picked themselves up, and
tried to re-form the lines. Amidst the general scramble, nobody noticed
for a moment that Miss Bardsley was really hurt; when she attempted to
rise, however, her foot was so painful that she sank back with a groan.

"I'm afraid I must have sprained my ankle!" she exclaimed.

It was a case for "first aid", and the members of the ambulance class
had very soon shown the advantage of their training by taking off the
teacher's skates and boots, improvising a stretcher, and carrying her
into the house, where Miss Drummond set to work at once with hot
fomentations and bandages. Unfortunately, the mischief was greater than
anyone supposed, for when the doctor from Chetbourne arrived next
morning he declared that a bone was broken, and that the ankle must be
put into splints.

Naturally, this was a very awkward occurrence just at the beginning of
the term. Miss Bardsley would be disabled for some weeks, and in the
meantime, who would take her Form? For a few days one of the prefects
did duty, while Miss Drummond wrote post-haste to a scholastic agency,
to secure a teacher as locum tenens.

It was difficult to find anyone who was disengaged and could come at so
short a notice, and Miss Webb, the mistress who finally arrived, was
hardly to the taste of the Fourth Form. She had been a private governess
in a family, and was not accustomed to class teaching; and the girls
discovered in the first half-hour that she had not the slightest notion
of how to enforce discipline.

"She told me to stop talking, and when I didn't, she simply took no
notice!" chuckled Dora Maxwell.

"And she said: 'Ursula, dear, please do not fidget with your pencil,' in
such a mild, apologetic little voice!" laughed Ursula. "Miss Bardsley
would have glared, and said: 'Ursula, take a forfeit!'"

"She doesn't know anything, really, about the lessons," said Aldred
scornfully. "S