dn't let me have any--nasty, stingy old thing!"

"It's a weary world!" sighed Raymonde. "Especially when you've got to
learn the whole of Gray's Elegy by heart!"

CHAPTER XVII

The Fossil Hunters

If Miss Beasley had been asked what was her most difficult problem in
the management of her school, she would probably have replied the
arrangement of the practising time-table. With the exception of four,
all the girls learned music, and therefore, for a period of forty-five
minutes daily, each of these twenty-two pupils must do execution on
the piano. There were five instruments at the Grange, and, except
during the hours of morning lessons and meals, they hardly ever seemed
to be silent. At seven o'clock they began with scales, arpeggios, and
studies, and passed during the day through a selection of pieces,
classical and modern, in such various degrees of playing, strumming,
and thumping as might be calculated to wear out their hammers and snap
their strings in double quick time. About half of the girls learned
from Mademoiselle, and the remainder had lessons from Mr. Browne, a
visiting master who came twice a week to the school. He was a short
little man, with sandy hair, and a bald patch in the middle of it, and
a Vandyke beard that was turning rather grey. He was himself an
excellent musician, and sometimes the performances of his pupils
offended his sensitive ear to the point of exasperation, and he would
storm at them in a gurgling voice, blinking his short-sighted hazel
eyes very rapidly, and wrinkling up his forehead till it looked like
squeezed india-rubber. It was on record that he had once hit Lois
Barlow a hard crack over the knuckles with his fountain-pen, whereupon
she wept--not so much from pain as from injured feelings--and he had
apologized in quite a gentlemanly fashion, and picked up the music
that in his burst of temper he had flung upon the floor. In spite of
his acknowledged irritability, all the girls who learned from him gave
themselves airs of slight superiority over those who only learned from
Mademoiselle. Though strict, he was an inspiring teacher, and when, as
occasionally happened, he would push his pupil from the stool, and
seat himself in her place to show the proper rendering of some
passage, the music that followed was like a lovely liquid dream of
sound.

Professor Marshall also attended the school twice a week to lecture on
literature and natural science. He was a much greate