'Three hundred and nineteen pounds six and sevenpence,' read out Bertha.
'Hands up girls who have got that answer,' said Miss Crossland.
At least twenty out of the thirty hands went up like lightning into the air.
'Right!' ventured the teacher.
Peggy gazed at her sum in amazement. She differed from the answer by several figures. Could both she and Lilian have made a mistake? It seemed impossible, for Lilian was so splendid at arithmetic. But Bertha was reading out the next sum, and the next. To each answer she gave a crowd of uplifted hands agreed with her, and poor Peggy found, to her chagrin, that in every case her figures were not the same. It could not be that all the ten sums she had taken so much pains over were wrong. If so, it meant a very bad mark for arithmetic.
'Oh, Miss Crossland,' she burst out, 'it's not fair! I know my answers were right. If you would only work them out on the board, you'd soon see.'
'Margaret Vaughan,' said Miss Crossland sternly, 'I am the best judge in this matter, and if I have any more trouble with you this morning I shall send you straight to Miss Martin. I do not allow any girl to speak to me in that tone.'
Though inwardly raging, Peggy was forced to put on an outward appearance of submission and good behaviour, and the lessons droned on somehow until the morning was over. Most of the girls fled, as usual the moment the class was dismissed; but Peggy stayed behind in the schoolroom to tidy her desk and talk to Nora Pemberton, who just at present was her particular friend among her schoolmates.
'I can't think how it was my sums were all wrong,' she lamented, as she put away the ill-fated home-lesson book. 'Did you get yours right, Nora?'