one.

"Since you refuse to give me any explanation, I can only put down your
omission to prepare the essay to rank laziness," she remarked icily.
"Possibly you thought that as I was a newcomer, you could do what you
liked in my classes. You will find that you have made a mistake, for I
assure you that I am going to stand no nonsense. Of course, there will
be no marks for this lesson, and you will write the essay for the next
German class in addition to the fresh work which I shall set you. I
had intended to read your essays aloud and criticise them in class, but
since they are not written I cannot, of course, do that."

"Thank the Lord they aren't written, then," muttered Jack in an aside
to Phyllis Tressider. Unfortunately for Jack, Miss Burton's quick ears
caught the remark and she pounced upon the offender in a trice.

"Joanna Pym, take a bad mark," she snapped. Then she resumed her
address to the rest of the form.

"Since I cannot carry out my original intention of criticising your
essays, I am going to ask you questions in German which I shall expect
you to answer in that language. Dorothy Pemberton, you are sitting at
the end of a row, I shall begin with you. Everybody pay attention,
please. Dorothy, 'Was hast du waehrend deinen Sommerferien getan?'"

It was a question to which Dorothy could have found any amount of
suitable answers, but, mindful of the compact with the form, she sat in
silence and the question passed to her next-door neighbour, Phyllis.
Phyllis also passed it, and thereafter Miss Burton went from one girl
to another without receiving any attempt at a reply. When the whole
form had passed the question in dead silence, the mistress, quivering
with anger, propounded another.

"'Warum halten die Dichter der Fruehling fuer die schoensten der
Jahreszeiten?'" she inquired, with a ferocity which was rather at
variance with the peaceful tenor of the question.

Once again it was Dorothy's turn to answer. Once again she passed the
question, and once again it travelled right round the form without
eliciting a response in German or in any other language.

"Does anybody know the meaning of this sentence?" asked Miss Burton
sarcastically, still struggling to preserve her self-control.
Everybody knew it, of course, but nobody would condescend to say so,
and the class retained its stubborn demeanour.

Then the mistress could contain her wrath no longer. The storm broke,
and for a quarter of a