“You are falling back. There is something on your mind beside your textbooks, that is very sure, Miss Morse. I cannot lay it to athletics at present, I suppose, for there seems to be a slight let-up in the activities of you young ladies in that direction,” and she smiled her very scornfullest smile. Miss Carrington abhorred athletics.
“But we have another matter interfering with the placid current of our school life. Are you, Miss Morse, one of the young ladies who are attempting to write a play?”
“Ye—yes, ma’am,” stammered Jess, blushing to her ears.
“Ah! so I thought. I believe I can pick out all these playwrights by a reference to their recitation papers. And this afternoon comes our mid-term examination. Let me tell you, Miss Morse, that you must do better this afternoon, or I shall take your case up with Mr. Sharp.”
She was folding and tying with a narrow ribbon some papers as she spoke, and her eyes snapped behind her glasses.
“These are the questions in my hands now, Miss Morse,” said Gee. “And let me tell you, they are searching ones. Be prepared, Miss—be prepared!”
And she popped them into the top drawer on the right-hand side of her desk. But before she could shut down the roll top and so lock the desk, Miss Gould appeared at the door of the room and beckoned to Miss Carrington. The latter rose hurriedly and departed, leaving her desk open. And likewise leaving Jess Morse, her hungry eyes fixed upon that drawer in which the examination questions lay!
Just a peep at those papers might have helped Jess a whole lot in the coming hour of trial.
CHAPTER XI—MISSING
Alice Long, who was Short and Long’s sister, was entertaining some of the girls when Jess Morse came into the recreation hall with something her little brother Tommy had said.