dgeted more than usual. By the time the hour was over quite a lot of
these distinctions had been gained.

"Well, we shall have some marks to give in, anyway," said Jack, when
the Lower Fifth was released at eleven o'clock recess to refresh itself
with cocoa and biscuits in the dining-hall. "Better have bad marks to
give in, I suppose, than none at all!"

"I wonder what she'll do when it comes to literature and she finds we
haven't prepared for that, either," said Hilda, with rather a tragic
expression on her face. Hilda's conscience was troubling her a good
deal. She had very lively visions of what the headmistress would
probably say about her responsibility as head of the form, when the
matter should get to her ears.

"Treat us the same way as she did in algebra class, I expect," said
Jack, with a grimace. "Wasn't it a rotten thing to go and do? I'd
much rather she had raved at us like she did over the German--that
really was rather fun!"

"It was rather cute of her, all the same," said Dorothy, with a sort of
grudging admiration. "It made me feel rather mean when she settled
down to correcting those papers like that. If she hadn't been quite so
lavish with her bad marks all the time, I almost believe I might have
repented a bit then."

"Oh, you'll repent all right, later on. Don't you worry about that,"
said Jack philosophically. "You just wait until Miss Oakley has given
us a jawing. She'll make you feel an utter worm; you just see if she
doesn't!"

"I know she will!" said Hilda, with a groan. "I say, don't you think
we'd better give in and tell Miss Burton that we're sorry? There's a
perfectly awful time waiting for us if we go on with the strike."

"We've gone too far to draw back now," said Dorothy. "So we may as
well go on a little longer and see if we can't accomplish something.
We've set out to show Miss Burton that she's come to an up-to-date
public school, and that her old-fashioned kindergarten methods won't go
down here. Don't let's give in before the campaign's properly begun!"

"Courage, _mes amis_," cried Jack gaily, waving a biscuit over her
head. "The worst is still to come, I admit, but we are martyrs in a
good cause. We'll teach Miss Burton a lesson before we've done! And
if we burn our own fingers in the doing of it--well, we knew we
shouldn't get off scot-free before we began, didn't we?"

"Anyway, we shall have a bit of a run for our money," observed Nita
Fleming, who