Not a hand was raised. The whole form sat in rigid stillness; and the mistress put her question in a slightly different form.
"Hands up those of you who have not done it," she said.
With a promptness that would have done the form credit in a drill display, a hand shot up from every girl, while a stifled giggle ran round the room at the look of blank astonishment that spread over the mistress's face.
"I shall be obliged if someone will enlighten me as to why this work has not been done," Miss Burton said at length in her stiffest manner. But although she waited for an answer, none came. Once more she turned to Hilda.
"Hilda Burns, will you please explain why the form has not done the preparation that I set?" she demanded. But there was no satisfactory explanation to be got out of Hilda. The head of the form blushed and stammered and fidgeted, but no coherent answer was forthcoming from her, and at last the mistress gave up the attempt to elicit one.
"Since you refuse to give me any explanation, I can only put down your omission to prepare the essay to rank laziness," she remarked icily. "Possibly you thought that as I was a newcomer, you could do what you liked in my classes. You will find that you have made a mistake, for I assure you that I am going to stand no nonsense. Of course, there will be no marks for this lesson, and you will write the essay for the next German class in addition to the fresh work which I shall set you. I had intended to read your essays aloud and criticise them in class, but since they are not written I cannot, of course, do that."
"Thank the Lord they aren't written, then," muttered Jack in an aside to Phyllis Tressider. Unfortunately for Jack, Miss Burton's quick ears caught the remark and she pounced upon the offender in a trice.
"Joanna Pym, take a bad mark," she snapped. Then she resumed her address to the rest of the form.
"Since I cannot carry out my original intention of criticising your essays, I am going to ask you questions in German which I shall expect you to answer in that language. Dorothy Pemberton, you are sitting at the end of a row, I shall begin with you. Everybody pay attention, please. Dorothy, 'Was hast du während deinen Sommerferien getan?'"
It was a question to which Dorothy could have found any amount of suitable answers, but, mindful of the compact with the form, she sat in silence and the question passed to her next-door neighbour, Phyllis. Phyllis also passed it, and thereafter Miss Burton went from one girl to another without receiving any attempt at a reply. When the whole form had passed the question in dead silence, the mistress, quivering with anger, propounded another.