ighed Rosa Bird.

"I can't think why I stay at all," said Beth. "I hate it--I hate it
all the time."

"But how could one get away?" said Janey.

"Only by being ill," Agnes Stewart answered darkly. She was a delicate
girl, and from that time she starved herself resolutely, until she was
so wasted that Miss Clifford in despair sent her home. Another girl
was seized with total deafness suddenly, and had also to go; the
change brought her hearing back in a very short time; and some of the
dockyard girls received urgent summonses from dying relations, and
were allowed to go to them. They always returned the brighter for the
experience.

One day, after the weather became cold, a girl appeared in class
wrapped up in a shawl, and with her head all drawn down to one side.
Her neck was stiff, and she could not straighten it. She was sent to
the infirmary. The girls thought her lucky. For it was warm there, and
nurse was kind, and sang delightful songs. She would be able to do
fancy-work, too, and read as much as she liked, and would not have to
get up till she had had her breakfast and the fire was lighted, and
need not trouble about lessons at all--a stiff neck was a very small
drawback to the delights of such a change.

Next day another girl's neck was stiff. Miss Smallwood searched for a
draught, but did not succeed in finding one. That evening at prayers
one of the girls in the first appeared in a shawl with her head on one
side and a white worn face; and next day there was another case from
the third and fourth. So it was evident that there was something like
an epidemic going through the school; but the doctor had never seen
one of the kind before, and was at a loss to account for it. The cases
were all exactly alike: stiff neck, with the head drawn down to one
side, accompanied by feverishness, and followed by severe prostration.

Beth sat with a stolid countenance, and stared solemnly at every girl
that was attacked, as if she were studying her case. Then, one
morning, she came down in a shawl herself, with her head on one side
and a very white face. Nurse marched her off at once to the infirmary,
and put her in a bed beside the fire, and Beth, as she coiled herself
up, and realised that she need not worry about lessons, or rush off to
practise when the bell rang, or go out to walk up and down in the
garden till she hated every pebble on the path, heaved a great sigh of
relief and fell asleep. When she awoke the do