"Pooh! there wasn't a thing I said that anybody need to make such a fuss about," she declared loftily; then, as she spied Harold Day coming toward them, she called in a merry voice: "Seen the new boy, Harold? His name is 'O. B. J. Holmes.' I say his name is 'O Be Joyful,' and the girls are shocked at my disrespect."
"Is that so?" laughed Harold. "Well, I'm not sure I'd like that name myself very well—even if 'tis a cheerful one! Where's Genevieve? One doesn't often see one of you without all of you."
"Oh, she was here, but she's gone. She was the most shocked of all," answered Tilly, with mock humility. "Probably she's gone to tell him so. You see, she shook hands with him and introduced us all around, and said she'd like to welcome him and that she hoped he'd enjoy it here."
"Oh, Tilly!" remonstrated Cordelia.
"Why, Cordelia, didn't she?" asked Tilly, in a particularly innocent tone of voice.
"Y-yes," admitted Cordelia, reluctantly, "only—" The bell rang and the group broke up, with Cordelia's sentence still unfinished.
The rest of the day for the Happy Hexagons was not an easy one. Tilly looked rebellious—and ashamed. Cordelia looked ready to cry. Genevieve kept her eyes on her books and seemed unaware that there was such a thing in the world as a girls' club, of which she was a prominent member. Bertha, Elsie, and Alma divided their time between scowling at Tilly and trying to attract Genevieve's attention.
It was during the Latin recitation, which came just before closing time at noon, that Cordelia's perturbation culminated in a blunder that sent most of the class into convulsive giggles, and even brought a twitching smile to Genevieve's tense lips.
Cordelia, rising to translate in her turn, hurried blindly through a paragraph until she came to the words "sub jugum". Now Cordelia very well knew what "sub jugum" meant; but her eyes, at the moment, were divided between her book and Genevieve's flushed cheeks, and so saw, apparently, but half of the word "jugum". At all events, the next moment the class were amazed to learn from Cordelia's lips that Cæsar sent the army—not "under the yoke" as was expected—but "under the jug."
Cordelia knew, before the titters of the class told her, what she had said; and with hot blushes she made a hasty correction. But to Cordelia, usually so conscientiously accurate and circumspect, the thing was a tragedy, and, as such, would not soon be forgotten by her. She knew, too, that the class would not let her forget it even could she herself do so. If she had doubted this, she did not doubt it longer, after school was dismissed, for she was assailed on all sides by a merry bombardment of gibes and questions as to just what sort of jug it was, anyhow, under which Cæsar sent his army.