to speak of your teachers."

The child raised the Semitic arch of her eye-brows. Her face belonged to
the type formed from all eternity for the expression of contempt.

"She's not my teacher, thank goodness. Do you know what I'm going to be
some day, when she's married and gone away? I'm going to be what she
is--Classical Mistress. I shan't have to do any sums for that, you know.
I shall only have to know Greek, and isn't it a shame, Miss Quincey,
they won't let me learn it till I'm in the Fourth, and I never shall be.
But--don't tell any one--they've stuck me here, behind her now, and when
she's coaching that young idiot Susie Parker--"

"Laura, that is not the way to speak of your school-fellows."

"I know it isn't, but she _is_, you know. I've bought the books, and I
get behind them and I listen hard, and I can read now. What's more, I've
done a bit of a chorus. Look--" The pariah took a dirty bit of paper from
the breast of her gown. "It goes, 'Oh Love unconquered in battle,' and
it's simply splend_if_erous. Miss Quincey--when you like anything very
much--or any_body_--it doesn't matter which--do you turn red all over? Do
you have creeps all down your back? And do you feel it just here?" The
child clapped her yellow claw to Miss Quincey's heart. "You _do_, you do,
Miss Quincey; I can see it go thump, I can feel it go thud!"

She gazed into the teacher's face, and again the power of divination was
upon her.

"Laura!" Miss Quincey gasped; for the Head had been looming in their
neighbourhood, a deadly peril, and now she was sweeping down on them,
smiling a dangerous smile.

"Miss Quincey, I hope you've been making that child work," said she and
passed on.

"I _say_! She didn't see my verses, did she? You _won't_ let on that I
wrote them?"

"You'll never write verses," said Miss Quincey, deftly improving a bad
occasion, "if you don't understand arithmetic. Why, it's the science of
numbers. Come now, if ninety hogsheads--"

"Oh-h! I'm so tired of hogsheads; mayn't it be firkins this time?"

And, for fancy's sake, firkins Miss Quincey permitted it to be.

Now Rhoda was responsible for much, but for what followed the Mad Hatter
must, strictly speaking, be held accountable.

Miss Quincey had never been greatly interested in the movements of her
heart; but now that her attention had been drawn to them she admitted
that it was beating in a very extraordinary way; there was a decided
palpitation, a flutter.