apron, she
concealed by hunching her shoulders.

Her lightning plan was, to enter a cloakroom, snatch a hurried peep at
Oliver's confounded policy, then hide the book somewhere till the
examination was over. But on emerging from the dining-hall she all but
collided with the secretary, who had come noiselessly across the
verandah; and she was so overcome by the thought of the danger she had
run, and by Miss Blount's extreme surprise at Dr Pughson's leniency,
that she allowed herself to be driven back to the examination-room
without a word.

The girls were hard at it; they scarcely glanced up when she opened the
door. From her friends' looks, she could judge of the success they were
having. Cupid, for instance, was smirking to herself in the peculiar
fashion that meant satisfaction; M. P.'s cheeks were the colour of
monthly roses. And soon Laura, crouching low to cover her deformity,
was at work like the rest.

Had only Oliver Cromwell never been born!--thus she reflected, when she
had got the easier part of the paper behind her. Why could it not have
been a question about Bourke and Wills, or the Eureka Stockade, or the
voyages of Captain Cook? ... something about one's own country, that
one had heard hundreds of times and was really interested in. Or a big,
arresting thing like the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, or Hannibal's
March over the Alps? Who cared for old Oliver, and his shorn head, and
his contempt for baubles! What did it matter now to anyone what his
attitude had been, more than two hundred years ago, to all those
far-away, dream-like countries? ... Desperately she pressed her hand to
her eyes. She knew the very page of Green on which Cromwell's foreign
relations were set forth; knew where the paragraph began, near the foot
of the page: what she could not get hold of was the opening sentence
that would have set her mechanical memory a-rolling.

The two hours drew steadily to a close. About half an hour beforehand
the weakest candidates began to rise, to hand in their papers and leave
the room; but it was not till ten minutes to twelve that the "crack"
girls stopped writing. Laura was to be allowed an extra twenty minutes,
and it was on this she relied. At last, she was alone with the master.
But though he was already dipping into the examination-papers, he was
not safe. She had unbuttoned two buttons and was at a third, when he
looked up so unexpectedly that she was scared out of her senses, and
fastened