ind her book. As the door closed Petty's inevitable "tee-hee-hee" was
audible. The next second the door was hastily opened.

"I _hope_," and Miss Baylis' suspicious eyes were upon her charges. Then
she vanished. Naturally someone else tittered.

Barely five minutes passed and when she returned her first words were:

"I hope--" then she paused for a smile appeared upon every face bringing
the abstracted lady back to earth. It was Beverly who asked innocently:
"Excuse me, Miss Baylis, but did you tell us to begin our literature
papers at the ninety-fifth line of Pope's Essay on Man: 'Hope springs
eternal'?"

"We ended our literature recitation ten minutes ago, Beverly. If you were
so inattentive as to miss what I said that is your misfortune," was the
austere retort. Nevertheless, the shot had told.

Ten more minutes of the period slipped by, nay, crawled by, in which Miss
Baylis darting from one victim to another bent upon reaching their
vulnerable points. Then it came, Electra Sanderson's turn to recite.

Now Electra Sanderson was distinctly of the nouveau riche. She came from
an eastern city where money is the god of things. Why her father, a
kindly soul who had risen from hod carrier to contractor, happened to
choose Leslie Manor for his youngest daughter must remain one of the
unanswered questions. Perhaps "mommer" made the selection on account of
the name which had appealed to her. Manors or manners were all one to
her. At any rate, Electra (christened Ellen) was a pupil at Miss
Woodhull's very select school. A big, good-natured, warm-hearted,
generous, dull _slouchy_ girl of seventeen, who never could and never
would "change her spots," but was inevitably destined to marry someone of
her own class, rear a flourishing family and settle down into a
commonplace, good-natured matron, Leslie Manor nevertheless, and
notwithstanding. Miss Woodhull and her staff might polish until
exhausted. The only result would be the removal of the plating and the
exposure of the alloy beneath.

Electra didn't care a whoop for the old fogies who had lived and ruled in
England generations before she was born. Indeed, she would not have wept
had England and all the histories ever written about her disappeared
beneath the sea which surrounded that country. What she wanted now was to
get out of that classroom and into the dining room visible from the
window near which she was sitting, and through which she gazed longingly,
for there