"'After pre-lim-in-ary ex-plor-ations he reached Khar-toum and organized his ex-pe-dition to the Great White Nile.'"
Sixteen sulky girls, feeling they had a real grievance, wrote down the unaccustomed words, with an ostentatious accompaniment of shrugging of shoulders, tapping of foreheads, nibbling of pen-holders, and other signals of mental distress.
"If we all get bad marks for dictation it won't be our faults," remarked Edie Browne in injured tones.
"You'll get a mark for bad conduct if you speak again!" snapped Lesbia.
For a moment or two there was silence, only broken by the sound of scratching pens. Then again came a piping voice.
"Do blots count? My ink's so thick it's made three smudges."
"Be as careful as you can," temporized Lesbia.
Dorothy sighed gustily, took her ink-pot out of its well, inspected it, stirred it up with her pen, and placed it on the top of her desk. At the very next dip she upset it, and its contents spread in a black stream over her exercise-book.
"Dor-othy!"
Lesbia's voice rose to crescendo at the spectacle of the delinquent, her sleeves soaked in ink, trying to dab up the mess with a morsel of blotting-paper and a pink-edged pocket handkerchief. She hastily came to the rescue with the duster from the blackboard, which dispersed a shower of chalk over the already injured costume of her maladroit pupil.