"Go and wash your hands at once!" she ordered, replacing the now empty ink-pot in its well, and putting the exercise-book to dry by the fire. "I'm astonished at such carelessness!"
Dorothy obeyed with something very like a surreptitious wink at her comrades. The form regarded her with an expression almost approaching admiration. One would judge the unspoken thought of each to be: "Why did not I think of such a lovely thing as to upset the ink and get sent to wash my hands instead of doing horrid dictation?"
After disposing of this interruption, Lesbia continued with the adventures of Sir Samuel Baker, despite the long words, refusing even to give the spelling of proper names, such as Nyanza and Gondokoro, declaring that all had an equal chance of getting them right.
"Or wrong!" growled Gwennie, under her breath.
"It's a quarter to eleven; and we always begin to correct them," volunteered the officious Jess Morrison.
Lesbia glared in her direction, but accepted the hint. It would need due time to correct the crop of mistakes which might certainly be expected.
"Change books!" she commanded, and, when the transfer had been effected, proceeded to go through the paragraphs, spelling the words, in the midst of which process arrived Dorothy (still with ink-stained sleeves though with cleaner fingers), who promptly asked her to begin again at the beginning as she had lost half.
There are limits to patience, and Lesbia's was at an end.
"You'll sit down and take 'missed' for your dictation, Dorothy Holding! Do you think I'm going to delay the form on your account? If I've any more trouble with you you'll go to Miss Tatham. Do you understand?"
Dorothy evidently did, for she subsided quietly into her desk, and the other girls took warning and behaved themselves. For five minutes a blessed peace reigned in IIb. Nobody was more absolutely thankful when the eleven o'clock bell rang than Lesbia. The ordeal of her first lesson was over, and, though things had not gone altogether smoothly, she had managed the form by herself, and had not been obliged to call in the assistance of any other teacher to read the riot act.