?"

"Dorothy Greenfield, please, till the end of the term. Next session my
new name can be entered on the College register, and I'll start in a
fresh character."

"Then in the meantime we'll call you Rosador, as a compromise."

There was very little of the term left now, for the examinations were to
begin the next week, and after those were over would come the annual
speech day, which always concluded the school year. Dorothy's studies
had naturally been somewhat upset by the recent course of events, but
she had made an extra spurt at her work, and did not feel herself ill
prepared. She rather liked examinations. She had a clear head and a good
memory, and a neat, concise method of setting forth her information.

"I think it's quite inspiring to see a pile of fresh sheets of foolscap
and a paper of questions," she declared.

"Yes, if you can answer the questions," returned Mavie. "It's a
different matter if one's stumped. I'm utterly against the competitive
system."

Dorothy laughed.

"State your reasons, Mavie," urged Ruth Harmon. "We'll set 'The
Competitive System' as a subject for the Debating Society."

"Well, to begin with, emulation is the wrong spirit in which to promote
work."

"A grand sentiment--but nothing would promote work in you, you dear old
lazybones, so it's no use arguing the point."

"Very well. If I'm content to absorb my knowledge in homeopathic doses,
why must I be worried into swallowing more than I can digest? If I were
running a school I'd allow the clever girls who wanted to go in for
exams, to take them, and let the others alone. I call it sheer cruelty
to put the ordinary rank and file on the rack. Next week will be
purgatory to me. You'll see me pining day by day, and gradually wasting
away."

In spite of Mavie's forebodings, she survived the ordeal of the
examination, and presented her usual appearance of robust health at the
end of the dreaded period.

"I've done badly, though," she protested. "I expect I've failed in at
least half my subjects. The maths. was detestable and the geometry
simply wicked. Rosador, you're looking very smug. I believe you liked
the papers."

"They weren't bad, as papers go," returned Dorothy. She did not care to
boast, but she was conscious that she had done well, and reached a mark
far above her average standard.

"Still, one never knows," she thought. "Exams. are uncertain things, and
heaps of other girls may have done better than I have. I