turdays. Girls who are
not boarders do not feel this lack of variety. The walk to and from
school, and, above all, the different subjects which are discussed at
home, make a change of thought and a wholesome break; but the monotony
of spending week after week meeting no one except teachers and
companions, discussing nothing but school topics, never seeing a
newspaper or a magazine or hearing what is going on in the outside
world, is apt to have a rather depressing influence upon some
dispositions. The teachers, seeing us all day long, were inclined to
worry too much over our small faults, while we on our side, having
little else to distract our minds, were wont to magnify our woes out of
all just proportion. Miss Percy's nagging only seemed to make my faults
the worse.

"I never seem able to please her," I grumbled one day at breakfast-time.
"If I say my lessons correctly she tells me I'm twitching my hands or
wrinkling my forehead; and then if I try to think about my hands and my
forehead the lessons go right out of my mind, so I'm wrong either way.
It seems no use trying."

"She's horribly mean," sighed Janet, who suffered at times herself. "My
exercise was quite right yesterday, but she made me copy it all out
again, just because I had four mistakes in spelling. It was really too
bad."

"I could forgive her the exercises," said Millicent, "if she'd only make
stronger coffee. This cup of mine is simply dish-water. I wish Mrs.
Marshall would come down again at breakfast-time, it used to be ever so
much better when she poured out."

"Let us get up a round robin and beg her to come!" laughed Cathy. "We
could say we'd missed her charming conversation."

"Quietly! Quietly!" said Miss Percy from the other end of the table, for
Cathy had raised her voice above the low undertone in which we had been
speaking.

"We might ask her to give 'coffee' as the next conversation topic," said
Janet, "and then Millicent could announce that she liked it strong, as
her intelligent remark."

"It's the chicory I object to," said Millicent; "I loathe the smell of
it. I'm sure it oughtn't to have any in. Ought it, Phil?"

"Certainly not," I replied. "I wish you could have tasted the coffee we
used to have at San Carlos. You'd never forget it. It came from our own
plantations, and Pedro used to roast it and grind it just before he
poured the water on. I've often watched him make it. That was really
worth calling coffee."

"Pity we