"It isn't me at all," replied Nat lugubriously and ungrammatically. "You don't imagine I should decorate the place in this way, do you? It's my new study-mate, Monica Carr. She spends all her odd minutes writing out these rules and hints, and when they've been up about a week a fresh lot takes their place. She says she's bound to learn them when she's always staring at them. The trouble is I've got to stare at them too. Sometimes I sit here for half an hour at a time with my eyes shut."
"And you are trying to write home too, aren't you?" sympathized Madge. "You'll be putting isosceles for sausage, and parallel for pudding, and tangent for tangerine, and ending up 'Cordialement à vous' instead of 'Heaps of love'!"
Allison was smiling. "So it's the new girl, then, that's so keen on learning?" she said.
"Well, you see, she's made up her mind she's coming out top of the exams this term. She wants to crow over the Fifth, and she seems a person who can be very obstinate when she gets an idea into her mind. There's French and Latin on one wall, as you see, and maths on the second. That's the last theorem we've learnt, also the formula for arithmetical progression or something of that sort. The third wall is devoted to history and geography. Everywhere I go now I see '1832, the Reform Bill' dancing before my eyes, and when I shut them it's even plainer."
"You poor soul!"
"Yes," continued Nat, who seemed to find it a relief to air her grievances. "She took down my pictures, and when I protested she said that she wouldn't have done so if they had been Raphaels or Rubens, but as they were only pictures of dogs, and extremely ugly ones at that, it didn't matter much. I had three very nice ones, a St. Bernard, a bulldog and a bloodhound."
Madge shuddered. "I shouldn't think it's very jolly to sit looking at the picture of a bloodhound all the evening, either," she murmured.
"The other girls have nicknamed this study the Chamber of Horrors," continued Nat, "and wherever I go they sympathize with me. I'm getting so tired of it. But A. A. doesn't mind in the least."
"A. A.?" questioned Allison.
"That's Monica's new nickname. The Ablative Absolute they call her, because she's such a dab at Latin and picks out ablative absolutes with unerring instinct. Sometimes when we're about together they call us 'Accusative and Infinitive.' I object very strongly to being called an Infinitive."