sson, she would turn to
Laura and say jocosely: "Now, Laura, come on, tell us what colour that
is. Red and yellow, don't you think?"

But these were "Tom Fool's colours"; and Laura kept a wise silence.

One day at geography, the pupils were required to copy the outline of
the map of England. Laura, about to begin, found to her dismay that she
had lost her pencil. To confess the loss meant one of the hard, public
rebukes from which she shrank. And so, while the others drew, heads and
backs bent low over their desks, she fidgeted and sought--on her [P.72]
lap, the bench, the floor.

"What on earth's the matter?" asked her neighbour crossly; it was the
black-haired boarder who had winked at Laura the first evening at tea;
her name was Bertha Ramsey. "I can't draw a stroke if you shake like
that."

"I've lost my pencil."

The girl considered Laura for a moment, then pushed the lid from a box
of long, beautifully sharpened drawing-pencils. "Here, you can have one
of these."

Laura eyed the well-filled box admiringly, and modestly selected the
shortest pencil. Bertha Ramsay, having finished her map, leaned back in
her seat.

"And next time you feel inclined to boo-hoo at the tea-table, hold on
to your eyebrows and sing Rule Britannia.--DID it want its mummy, poor
ickle sing?"

Here Bertha's chum, a girl called Inez, chimed in from the other side.

"It's all very well for you," she said to Bertha, in a deep, slow
voice. "You're a weekly boarder."

Laura had the wish to be very pleasant, in return for the pencil. So
she drew a sigh, and said, with over-emphasis: "How nice for your
mother to have you home every week!"

Bertha only laughed at this, in a teasing way: "Yes, isn't it?" But
Inez leaned across behind her and gave Laura a poke.

"Shut up!" she telegraphed.

"Who's talking down there?" came the governess's cry. "Here you, the
new girl, Laura what's--your-name, come up to the map."

A huge map of England had been slung over an easel; Laura was required
to take the pointer and show where Stafford lay. With the long stick in
her hand, she stood stupid and confused. In this exigency, it did not
help her that she knew, from hear-say, just how England looked; that
she could see, in fancy, its ever-green grass, thick hedges, and
spreading trees; its never-dry rivers; its hoary old cathedrals; its
fogs, and sea-mists, and over-populous cities. She stood face to face
with the most puzzling map in the world--a