'What a stupid sum!' thought Peggy. 'How could there be a hen and a half? I don't know the least how to state it. Is the answer to come out in hens or eggs or days?'
She put down a few random figures, then her thoughts wandered off to the brown speckled hen at home, and she wondered if the little chicks would hatch out to-day, and whether Nancy would remember to go and see, and put the dear fluffy yellow things in a basket before the kitchen fire.
'Your answer, Margaret?' said Miss Crossland. But Peggy's mind was so far away in the Abbey barn that she did not at once hear her.
Perhaps Emily Thompson really wished to recall Peggy's wandering thoughts, or perhaps there was just a spice of malice in the action—at any rate, she dug the point of her lead-pencil so sharply into poor Peggy's hand that her astonished victim sat up with a yell.
'Margaret!' exclaimed the outraged mistress.
'I couldn't help it!' cried Peggy, grown desperate: 'Emily hurt me so!'
'I'm very sorry, Miss Crossland,' said Emily sweetly. 'I didn't mean to hurt Margaret, only to make her see you were speaking to her.'
'Which would not have been necessary if she had been attending properly,' replied the mistress. 'And I must say I think little of any girl who cannot endure a moment's pain in silence. Read out your answer, Emily, and I will then correct the home-work.'
Peggy heaved a sigh of relief at that. She knew the sums which she had worked at home on Saturday were correct, for Lilian had gone over them carefully afterwards, so she opened her book and took up her pencil ready to put a triumphant 'R' to each of them.
'Miss Martin has borrowed my Blackie's Arithmetic,' said Miss Crossland, 'so I have not the answers here. But read out your results, Bertha Muir, and I shall be able to judge from the general average whether they are correct or not.'