tory came out;
Mona had to endure, as best she could, the spectacle of Minnie elevated
to the pedestal of heroism, and finding herself all but sent to
Coventry. As may be imagined, this state of affairs did not tend to
soothe her already ruffled feelings, but rather the opposite, so that,
by the time school was dismissed she was in no enviable frame of mind.

She did not sit at her work chatting and laughing with the others who
remained behind, long after school hours, but immediately left the
schoolroom, and proceeded to don her hat and ulster in haste, lest any
one should come out before she could leave. Just as she lifted her glove
she noticed something white on a table in one corner, and
notwithstanding her haste she was moved by a strong desire to go over
and look at it. It turned out to be a heap of manuscript.

"Why, it's Minnie Kimberly's," she said to herself. "Her Latin
translation for the examination! just like her to leave it about in this
manner!" she ran her eye over several lines.

"How beautiful!" she exclaimed, under her breath, "I could do nothing
like it if I tried a hundred years. I am not afraid of her in anything
else, but if she sends this, I may give up hope."

Then a strong temptation seized her to hide the manuscript, and so not
only be revenged on Minnie for her humiliation, but also secure the
certainty of her success in the examination.

"Why should she have everything?" she asked petulantly, "Is it not
enough for her that she has sweet temper, and popularity,
and--Christianity," and her lip did not curl at the word now that she
was alone as it certainly would have done had there been others by. An
expression of deep pain came into her beautiful face, and putting down
the manuscript where she had found it, she laid her head on the dusty
table and something like a sigh escaped her.

"No!" she said, in her excitement speaking aloud. "Minnie _shall_ have
the prize. She deserves it as she does all the gifts my selfish heart so
wickedly envies her; we may not be friends, but at least we can be fair
rivals."

A step was heard in the room, and without looking round to ascertain
whose it might be, Mona snatched up her gloves and disappeared.

Minnie, for it was she, stood staring in a dazed sort of way at the
place where Mona had been, not a moment before, in such an attitude of
dejection as no one had ever believed her capable of yielding to, and
thoroughly mystified by her last words whic