It was recess; and Bessie stood at the back schoolroom window, watching her brothers and the rest of Mr. Peters' boys at play. Four of the older girls were in the room, two of them standing by the fire talking; while the others, namely Kate Maynard and Fanny Berry, were at their desks, each preparing a neglected lesson. Their French master came at half-past twelve, and they were now in a great hurry to finish the exercises which should have been ready the night before.
"There!" said Kate, throwing down her pen and shutting her exercise-book with an energetic slap upon the cover, "I am through. How about you, Fanny?"
Fanny looked up at the little clock which stood upon the mantelpiece, and shook her head despairingly.
"No," she said, "and I shall not be able to finish. I am not half as quick as you, Kate. It is twenty minutes past twelve, and old Gaufrau will be here in ten minutes. Oh, if I had but ten more, I would do it! He threatened to complain of me to Mrs. Ashton next time I was not ready for him. It's all the fault of that story-book you lent me, Julia Grafton: I sat the whole evening reading it, and quite forgot my exercise."
"Please do not blame me or the book," said Julia. "I did not ask you to borrow it, nor did the book request to be read, I imagine."
"Do stop talking, and write all you can," said Kate. "What's the good of wasting more time?"
"If I only had ten minutes more!" moaned Fanny again.
"If the clock were only slow, as it was the other day," said Mary Merton. "We need not tell Monsieur that it was not right, for he would never know; for he has no watch of his own, and always goes by this."
"Tell him it's too fast," said another.
"He'll be sure to suspect something when he sees Fanny scrambling through her exercise at that rate."