, the triumph
of their return, laden with their evergreen trophies, to find the big
fire blazing under the great iron kettle and the water boiling, and the
girls well on with the scrubbing.

Then, while the girls scrubbed first the benches and desks, and last of
all, the floors, the boys washed the windows and put up the evergreen
decorations. Every corner had its pillar of green, every window had its
frame of green, the old blackboard, the occasion of many a heartache to
the unmathematical, was wreathed into loveliness; the maps, with their
bewildering boundaries, rivers and mountains, capes, bays and islands,
became for once worlds of beauty under the magic touch of the greenery.
On the wall just over his desk, the master wrought out in evergreen an
arching "WELCOME," but later on, the big girls, with some shy blushing,
boldly tacked up underneath an answering "FAREWELL." By the time the
short afternoon had faded into the early evening, the school stood,
to the eyes of all familiar with the common sordidness of its everyday
dress, a picture of artistic loveliness. And after the master's little
speech of thanks for their good work that afternoon, and for all their
goodness to him, the boys and girls went their ways with that strangely
unnameable heart-emptiness that brings an ache to the throat, but
somehow makes happier for the ache.

The examination day was the great school event of the year. It was the
social function of the Section as well. Toward this event all the school
life moved, and its approach was attended by a deepening excitement,
shared by children and parents alike, which made a kind of holiday
feeling in the air.

The school opened an hour later than ordinarily, and the children came
all in their Sunday clothes, the boys feeling stiff and uncomfortable,
and regarding each other with looks half shy and half contemptuous,
realizing that they were unnatural in each other's sight; the girls
with hair in marvelous frizzes and shiny ringlets, with new ribbons, and
white aprons over their home-made winsey dresses, carried their unwonted
grandeur with an ease and delight that made the boys secretly envy but
apparently despise them. The one unpardonable crime with all the boys
in that country was that of being "proud." The boy convicted of "shoween
off," was utterly contemned by his fellows. Hence, any delight in new
clothes or in a finer appearance than usual was carefully avoided.

Ranald always hated new