"Miss Pierson," she said, toward the end of the lesson, in a voice so rasping as to make the girls fairly shiver, "go to the blackboard and demonstrate this problem."
Then she read aloud in the same disagreeable voice, the following difficult problem:
"'Train A starts from Chicago going thirty miles an hour. An hour later Train B starts from Chicago going thirty-five miles an hour. How far from Chicago will they be when Train B passes Train A?'"
The girls looked up surprised. The problem was well in advance of what they had been studying and Miss Leece was really asking Anne to recite something she had not yet learned.
Anne hardly knew how to reply to the terrible woman who stood glowering at her as if she would like to crush her to bits.
"I'm sorry," said the girl. "I cannot."
"Miss Nesbit," said the teacher, "will you demonstrate this problem?"
Miriam rose with a little smile of triumph on her face and went to the blackboard, where she worked out the problem.
"Why, what on earth does the woman mean?" whispered Grace. "Are we expected to learn lessons we have never been taught and has that horrid Miriam been studying ahead?"
"I think I must be dreaming," replied Anne, looking sorrowfully at Miss Leece.