out!"

"You look a nice object to walk home with!" giggled Aveline. "What'll
Gibbie say?"

What Miss Gibbs remarked when she saw the state of her pupil's
garments was:

"Really, Raymonde, I might have known you would be sure to do some
stupid thing! No other girl in the school has fallen into the mud. Why
didn't you keep with the rest, and look where you were going? You're
more trouble than everybody else put together. If you can't behave
yourself when you come on an excursion, you must be left behind to do
some preparation."

The Mystics consoled their leader as best they could, offering her
their last remaining Paradise drops, and walking in a clump round her
through the village to shield her from observation. Ardiune, who was
poetically inclined, thought the occasion worthy of being celebrated
in verse, and at bedtime handed Raymonde the following effusion,
illustrated with spirited sketches in black lead-pencil, representing
her with clay-covered feet of gigantic proportions.

Raymonde, a nice and cheerful child
Who seldom wept and often smiled,
Was taken by her teachers kind
A jaunt, to elevate her mind.

By lengthy ladders undismayed,
Behold her seek the quarry's shade,
With firm resolve to hit and hew,
And find a fossil fern or two.

She rapped the rocks with anxious pick,
And scooped the ammonites out quick,
But as she rang her brief tap-tap
There chanced to her a sad mishap.

Urged on by hope of fossil round,
She stepped on some perfidious ground,
So now behold our luckless Ray
Plunged in the midst of horrid clay.

The mud had nearly reached her waist,
She called aloud in frantic haste:
"I sink, I sink in quagmire sable,
To free myself I am unable!"

Her friend, who hurried to her shout,
Had much ado to drag her out.
See! thick with mud and faint with fright,
She bravely bears her woeful plight.

Her tender teacher's anxious fears
She soothes, and dries her friends' fond tears,
Declaring, with a courage calm,
The outing had been worth th' alarm.

"Humph! Good for you, Ardiune!" commented Raymonde. "Not much
tenderness about Gibbie, though! And I didn't see anybody's fond
tears! You all