a voice of singular quality, a voice with a
thrill in it, saying, "Could'st love a Goat, Innocent?"

So she was not as well prepared as she should have been when she went
into the class; and on meeting Miss Pugsley's cold greenish brown eye,
what she did know seemed to evaporate from the top of her head, leaving
a total blank. She stumbled and floundered; she did not know what an
antecedent was, and she could not remember ever to have heard of a
reciprocal pronoun.

"Pray, Miss Montfort, were you asleep or awake when you studied this
lesson?" inquired Miss Pugsley, with acrid calm.

"I don't know!" replied Peggy, now thoroughly bewildered.

"Well, if you were asleep, let me recommend you to try it again when you
wake up; or if you were awake, perhaps you might do it better in your
sleep."

Peggy flushed scarlet, and the ready tears sprang into her eyes; but she
forced them back, bit her lip, and tried not to feel the eyes of the
whole class bent on her in amused astonishment. Miss Pugsley seemed to
take positive pleasure in her ignorance and embarrassment. She put one
question after another, each more ingeniously contrived than the
last--or so it seemed--to show what Peggy did not know. At last, in
self-defence, the poor child took refuge in one simple and invariable
answer: "I don't know!" So confused was she that these words were the
only ones she could utter, even when she knew the correct answer, or
would have done so if she could have collected her wits. By the end of
the hour, Peggy was entirely convinced that she was the dunce and butt
of the school; that she knew nothing, and never would know anything.

It seemed a cruel stroke of fate that this terrible period should be
followed by that of general history, for Peggy detested history, as some
of my readers already know. She went into the next class-room with an
aching head, and a heart throbbing with a sense of utter worthlessness
in herself, and of bitter cruelty in others. She did not even look up at
the teacher, but kept her eyes fixed on her desk, and answered the few
questions that meant anything to her, sullenly and unwillingly. She did
try at first to follow the lesson, but her head ached so, the words
seemed to sing themselves into mere nonsense, and she soon gave up the
attempt; the more so as this teacher, who had been observing her pretty
closely, for some reason or other asked her very few questions. At last,
however, the blow fell.

"Where