Miss Latham during the history
lesson just now. She never twigged."

"I don't wonder," declared Phyllis admiringly. "I didn't either. I
thought you were just making notes. But when did you learn to do it,
Jack? Of course I know you always were good at drawing, but I hadn't
the slightest idea that you could do such ripping caricatures."

"I didn't know it myself," replied Jack, still busily working with her
pencil. "But when we were at the seaside this year we came across a
man who did them for the papers. At least I came across him. He saved
my shoes and stockings from being washed away by the tide while I was
paddling one morning. And then we all chummed up with him and he
showed us some of his sketches, and we all started trying to do the
people we saw on the beach, and he said mine were quite decent for a
kid. There you are, Dorothy, there's your beloved Miss Latham. Who is
it you want, Hilda? Pretty Polly? All right, I'll do her if I get the
chance."

"Do one for me, Jack, there's a darling," cried a girl sitting close to
Geraldine, and then the whole form began clamouring for drawings of
their most beloved, or most hated, mistresses. Hilda felt it incumbent
upon her to raise her voice again in protest at last.

"I say, _do_ be quiet! Miss Parrot will be along directly. There'll
be an awful bust-up if she catches us talking like this."

But her remonstrance did not have much effect, except that it rather
served to increase the confusion. For Phyllis Tressider, crumpling up
a sheet of paper into a ball, flung it at her with an injunction to
"Shut up, dear old thing!" and the rest of the form promptly followed
her example. In a few seconds the head of the Lower Fifth was almost
snowed under with missiles of various sorts.

"I say--stop it!" she gasped, dodging an exercise book, only to receive
a piece of india-rubber full in the eye. Then, as a quick step sounded
in the passage outside, she sat up straight in her desk in an attitude
of sudden attention.

"Cave--Miss Parrot!" she whispered hoarsely. In a moment the Lower
Fifth was sitting rigidly at attention again, every sign of the late
battle cleared out of sight as though by a miracle. Only Geraldine,
new to scenes like this, not realising what this sudden transformation
might mean, was still sitting twisted round in her desk in the position
from which she had been watching the uproar in interested amusement.

She soon realised what th