brightly colored pictures
did force their way through her eye to her brain, instinct in every
fiber with the modern habit of taking in impressions from the printed
page; and for years afterwards she could have told the names of the
birds they saw during that long, still half-hour, broken by no sound
but the tap-tap-tap of Mr. Bristol's typewriter. He did not once look
towards them. This was partly a matter of policy, and partly because
he was trying desperately to get a paper written for the next
Convention of Public School Principals, which he was to address on
the "Study of Arithmetic in the Seventh Grade." He had very fixed and
burning ideas about the teaching of arithmetic in the seventh grade,
which he longed with a true believer's fervor to see adopted by all
the schools in the country. He often said that if they would only do
so, the study of arithmetic would be revolutionized in a decade.

Judith sat beside her sister, not pretending to look at the book,
although the rigidity of her face insensibly softened somewhat in the
contagious quiet of the room.

When they had turned over the last page and shut the book, Mr. Bristol
faced them again, leaning back in his swivel-chair, and said: "Now,
children--all quiet? One of you begin at the beginning and tell me how
it happened." Judith's lips shut together in a hard line, so Sylvia
began, surprised to find her nerves steadied and calmed by the silent
half-hour of inaction back of her. She told how they were met that
morning by the news, how the children shouted after Camilla as she got
into the carriage, how the Five A girls had decided to exclude her
from the picnic, how angry Judith had been, and then--then--she knew
no more to tell beyond the bare fact of Judith's passionate misdeed.

Mr. Bristol began to cross-examine Judith in short, quiet sentences.
"What made you think of throwing the things into the river?"

"I was afraid they'd get them back somehow if I didn't," said Judith,
as if stating a self-evident argument.

"Where did you go to throw them in? To the Monroe Street bridge?"

"No, I didn't have time to go so far. I just went down through
Randolph Street to the bank and there was a boat there tied to a tree,
and I got in and pushed it out as far as the rope would go and dropped
the things in from the other end."

Sylvia caught her breath in terror at this recital. The Piquota river
ran swift and turbid and deep between high banks at that point.
"