"Go on with the reading from the place where the last girl left off."
This command was shot out with such venom as to render poor Gerry a thousand times more nervous even than usual. She had lost her own place hopelessly by this time, and as she fumbled with the pages in the vain endeavour to find it and comply with the order, Miss Burton spoke again in a triumphant voice:
"I thought so. You do not know the place yourself, therefore you could not have been showing it to your companion! You are both of you extremely naughty, untruthful girls, and you will each take a conduct mark for your deceitfulness."
"Please, Miss Burton, I wasn't deceiving you!" cried Gerry, goaded into one of her rare attempts at self-assertion. "I was showing Margaret Taylor her place, and I did know it quite well until you confused me and made me lose it."
Miss Burton grew scarlet with anger.
"How dare you argue with me!" she said. "I see that you mean to give me as much trouble as you possibly can, but I mean to take a firm hand with you. Go and stand in that corner with your face to the wall until the lesson is over!"
A gasp of incredulous amazement went up from the Lower Fifth.
"Miss Burton! We're not babies!" cried Hilda Burns indignantly. "We're Fifth Form and not used to punishments like that. You can't make Gerry stand in a corner!"
"Don't interfere!" said the mistress. "Geraldine Wilmott, do as I direct you, at once."
Gerry's momentary display of spirit had quite spent itself by now. With a white face she walked across the schoolroom and took up the position Miss Burton indicated. And there she stood in silent humiliation with her face to the wall, while the rest of the form, sulky and rebellious, dragged through the remainder of the lesson.