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“Little flower, could I tell you that, I’d tell you my heart’s secret with it!” |
she misquoted.
“But do tell me! I think you might!”
“The more you tease, the less you’ll find out!”
The school bell put an end to the conversation, 269 and the girls, with straightened faces, marched to their places in the big lecture hall. The Reverend T. W. Beasley had taken full command of the examinations, and had introduced several innovations. On former occasions each Form had sat and written in its own room, but now desks had been placed for the whole school together, and were so arranged that the Forms sat alternately, a junior being sandwiched between each senior. The girls were hugely insulted. “He suspects we’ll copy each other’s papers!” thought Raymonde, and flashed her indignation along to Aveline. She did not speak, but her expressive glance drew forth a reproof from the examiner. He cleared his throat.
“Any girl communicating either by speech or otherwise will be dismissed from the room!” he announced freezingly.
After that, the girls scarcely dared to look up from their papers. They studied their questions and wrote away, some fast and furiously, and others with the desponding leisure of those having very little to put down. Mr. Beasley sat upon the platform, toying with his watch-chain, and keeping his eye upon the movements of the candidates. Fauvette, finishing long before the others, ventured to raise her eyes as high as his boots, and let them rest there, marvelling at the size and thickness of the footgear, and congratulating herself that she could wear number three.
The morning wore itself slowly away. When the school compared notes at 12.30, the girls agreed that they had never in their lives before been given such an atrocious and detestable set of examination papers. The Sixth had fared as badly as the Fifth 270 or the juniors, and even monitresses were loud in their complaints. Certain viva voces taken in the afternoon confirmed their ill opinion of their examiner.
“He glares at one till one’s frightened out of one’s wits!”
“And he hurries so—one hasn’t time to answer!”