"On my hon—" began Gwen, then stopped and stammered lamely. "Well, at least, there was once—"
The recollection had struck her of the evening when she had caught the rat in the hen-coop. She had been so upset and flurried on that occasion that she had certainly applied to Winnie for assistance with a passage that she could not have otherwise prepared.
"Once!" sneered Annie. "Oh, no doubt! Everybody in the Form knows how it is you get on so well with your work!"
"I get no help at home!" declared Millicent self-righteously.
"Oh, drop drivelling, and let Gwen alone! She's got to tell me these lines," said Netta. "What do I care how she prepares her work? Come, Gwen, ma-vourneen, be a real friend!"
As Gwen translated the passage Netta wrote it rapidly down in pencil, and even Annie and Millicent, in spite of their condemnations of assisted preparations, seized their books and followed the words carefully.
"A particularly nasty bit—I could never do it if I tried half a year. Thanks awfully!" said Netta, slipping the paper inside her Æneid.
"Netta, you're not going to—"
"Never mind what I'm going to do. My concerns are my own," returned Netta airily. "I'm an unlucky person, and I'm sure to get the worst piece if there is one. It's Kismet."
Gwen's desk was close to Netta's, and when the Virgil class began she could not help noticing the latter pop the scrap of paper on her knee under cover of a pocket handkerchief.