vous and
afraid, but who hid it so well that everyone believed him to be a hero.
I want to show that he really did become brave, because his friends
believed in him, and he tried to be worthy of their trust."
"Gracious! How dull. It sounds like a tract. Susan is a dear; but
she's a currant bun when all is said and done, and she can't get away
from it. They _are_ stodgers!" quoth Miss Dreda, with a shrug, as she
placed the paper beside her own in her desk. Her anger against Susan
had died a rapid death, for the double reason that she herself found it
impossible to harbour resentment, and that Susan steadily refused to be
a second party to a quarrel. Scornfully though her help had been
refused, she offered it afresh every evening, and after three days'
experience of struggle and defeat, Dreda was thankful to accept.
"But you _were_ mean about the editorship, all the same. It wasn't like
you, Susan!" she declared severely, feeling it would be too great a
condescension to capitulate without protest. "You are generally quite
sweet about helping other people. I don't understand what you were
thinking about!"
Susan's quiet smile seemed to express agreement with this last
statement, but she made no protest and allowed herself to be kissed and
petted with a condescending "We'll say no more about it, will we, dear?
Now for this exercise--it's a perfect brute!"
It was only by dint of ceaseless entreaties and cajoleries that the sub-
editor succeeded in collecting a respectable number of entries for the
first number of the magazine before the appointed date, and if the
absolute truth had been known she was already feeling overweighted with
the cares of office. It was a fag to be worried out of one's life, and
as a result to be disliked rather than praised.
"I shake in my shoes at the very sight of Dreda Saxon!" said Norah West
of the spectacles and freckles. "There's no peace in life while she is
on the rampage. This school has never been the same since she came.
She seems to have upset everything."
Nancy offered to contribute an article on "Characteristics of School
Celebrities--Literary and Sportive," and refused to be coaxed to a more
decorous subject. "That, or nothing!" was her mandate, so down it went
on the synopsis, followed, by way of contrast, by Mary Webster's "Essay
on Ancient Greece," and the head girl's "Great Women of History." Beryl
Turner, who had a passion for figure drawing, unjustified
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