page they were to draw had for
copy a cup and saucer. No, worse, a cup in a saucer. And by it was a
coffee-pot. And next to that was a pepper-box. And these were to be
drawn for Quarterly Examination--without tissue-paper.

When Emmy Lou had finished she felt discouraged. In the result one might
be pardoned for some uncertainty as to which was coffee-pot and which
pepper-box. The cup and saucer seemed strangely like a circle in a hole.
There was a yawning break in the paper from much erasure where the
handle of the coffee-pot should have been. There were thumb marks and
smears where nothing should have been. Emmy Lou looked at Hattie. Hattie
looked worn out. She had her book upside down, putting the holes in the
lid of the pepper-box. Sadie was crying. Tears were dropping right down
on the page of her book.

The bell rang. Examination in drawing was over. The books were
collected. Just as the teacher was dismissing them for recess she opened
a book. She opened another. She turned to the front pages. She passed a
finger over the reverse side of a page. She was a teacher of long years
of experience. She told the class to sit down. She asked a little girl
named Mamie Sessum to please rise. It was Mamie's book she held. Mamie
rose.

The teacher's tones were polite. It made one tremble, they were so
polite. "May I ask," said the teacher, "to have explained the system by
which the supposedly freehand drawing in this book has been done?"

"It wasn't any system," Mamie hastened to explain, anxious to disclaim a
connection evidently so undesirable; "it was tissue-paper."

"And this confessed openly to my face?" said the teacher. She was, even
after many years at the business of exposing the natural depravity of
the youthful mind, appalled at the brazenness of Mamie.

Mamie looked uncertain. Whatever she had done, it was well to have
company. "We all used tissue-paper," said Mamie.

It proved even so. The teacher, that this thing might be fully exposed,
called the roll. Each little girl responded in alphabetical sequence.
The teacher's condition of shocked virtue rendered her coldly laconic.

"Tissue-paper?" she asked each little girl in turn.

"Tissue-paper" was the burden, if not the form, of every alarmed little
girl's reply.

"Cipher," said the teacher briefly as each made confession, and called
the next.

O--Outer darkness!

The teacher at the last closed her book with a snap. "Cipher and worse,"
she told them