At class Miette looked very pale, and hardly raised her eyes from her books. In fact, her chiseled features looked like marble in the deep, black setting of her heavy hair.
“Poor child!” sighed Dorothy to herself, “I wonder what can be her trouble? It is surely not all grief for her mother, for even that would hardly deepen as the days go on, and she seemed actually jolly at first.”
Miss Bylow had the English class. There was plainly an air of expectancy in the school room. Miss Bylow was that angular sort of a person one is accustomed to associate with real spectacles and dark scowls. She wore her hair in a fashion that emphasized her peculiarities of features, and a schoolgirl, turnover collar finished the rather humorous effect.
“Valentine,” whispered Tavia to Edna.
“Bird,” muttered Edna in reply.
“Now, young ladies,” began the new teacher, as the class was opened, “I have one absolute rule, the violation of which I never condone. That is, in my class there shall be no notes passed. If a pupil must send a message to a girl during study hour she may ask the privilege of doing so. But under no circumstances will she write or pass a note surreptitiously. One assisting another with such deception is equally blamable. Now, you may go on with your work.”
This order fell upon the English class like a threat—how in the world were the girls to get along without ever writing a note? There are times when a girl feels something will happen if she cannot tell some one about the joke she sees, the chance for some fun later, or ask some one for the particular word that has deserted her and has to be found.
Never write a note in the English class? As well say, never whisper in the ranks!
And at that very moment every girl in the room wanted to do that very thing—write a note to another girl about the new rule, and incidentally, about the new teacher!
But no one dared venture—not even Edna or Tavia, who hitherto had little regard for “absolute rules.”