Alison, "though she isn't as hard
on me as she is on you. But it's perfectly easy to see what's the matter
with Miss Pitman--she's ambitious to climb. She wouldn't accept the
Parkers' invitation (they only live in a semi-detached villa), and she's
been twice to the Lawsons', who send her home in a motor. Well, she
won't be asked to our house."

"Nor to ours, though I don't suppose she'd want to come. All the same,
it's disgusting, and I've a very poor opinion of her."

That morning Miss Pitman took her classes without her ordinary adornment
in the way of a button-hole. Hope Lawson was absent, and the delicate
Marechal Niel or dainty spray of carnations that usually lay on her desk
at nine o'clock was absent also. Perhaps she missed it, for she was both
impatient and snappy in her manner during the lessons, waxed sarcastic
when Noelle Kennedy demanded an explanation of a rather obvious point,
and made no allowance for slips. She dictated the History notes so
quickly that it was very difficult to follow her, and woe to Dorothy,
who was rash enough to ask her to repeat a sentence!

"Are you deaf, Dorothy Greenfield? Sit up and don't poke. I can't allow
you to stoop over your desk in that way. If you're shortsighted, you
had better go to an oculist and get fitted with glasses."

Dorothy was apt to poke, and her attitude when writing was most
inelegant; but it is difficult to remember physical culture during the
agonies of following a quick dictation. She frowned and looked
thunderous as she made a jerky effort to sit straight.

"Miss Pitman's crosser than usual," she said to Alison at eleven
o'clock. "You'll see, I shall only get 'Moderate' for my literature
exercise, however well I do it."

"You mean she'll mark it low on purpose?"

"Yes; she never judges me fairly."

"But does she look at the names on the labels when she's correcting?"

"You may be sure she does, or Hope wouldn't always have 'Very Good'."

"Then, just as an experiment, let us exchange. I'll write my exercise in
your book, and you can write yours in mine. Our writing's sufficiently
alike."

"Oh, that would be a gorgeous joke! We'll do it; but don't tell a soul.
Let us go upstairs and arrange it now."

Dorothy wrote her literature exercise that morning in the book labelled
"Alison Clarke". She had prepared her subject carefully, and did her
very best not only to put down correct facts, but to attend to points
of composition. She tried to avoi