'And I too,' said Nora Pemberton.
Nobody else followed Peggy's example. Sissie Wilson bit the end of her pencil in abstruse calculation, Emily Thompson was deep in the pages of her arithmetic, while most of the girls were adding up columns as if for dear life.
Miss Crossland looked grave.
'Very well, Margaret and Nora,' she said, 'I must give you each a bad-conduct mark, and shall expect you both to stay after four o'clock this afternoon.'
The tears rose to Peggy's eyes at the injustice.
'What a mean set they are!' she said to herself. 'I'm sure Miss Crossland might have known they had been talking too; but she is always down upon me.'
She opened her desk, and searched for a fresh pencil to hide her tell-tale face, and somehow (she really did not mean it, but perhaps her tears blinded her) the desk-lid slid from her fingers, and fell down with an awful crash, which rang through the whole room.
'Take another bad-conduct mark, Margaret Vaughan,' said the calm voice of Miss Crossland. 'You must learn not to show temper when you are reproved.'
Poor Peggy groaned. Every bad-conduct mark meant six sums to be worked out when school was over. She and Lilian had been very anxious to get home early that afternoon, for they had meant to sow seeds in the garden; and Father was always angry if they kept Bobby waiting, for he did not like him to be loitering about the inn-yard listening to the talk of the stable-boys.
But Miss Crossland was writing a problem upon the blackboard in compound proportion. 'If a hen and a half lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs can four hens lay in six days?'