"Another good way is to get her started talking history," one of these knowing young ones giggled after a particularly absent-minded session with Miss Ridley. "She'll talk the period through and forget at the end of it that she has not called on a single person for recitation!"
Nevertheless, the girls learned history in Miss Ridley's class. Perhaps it was because the teacher herself was so passionately interested in the subject that she got her enthusiasm across to her students. At any rate, her lectures, always started by some innocent, demure-looking girl with a guilty secret up her sleeve, were more informative and created a more lasting impression than any amount of class recitation could have done.
There were the teachers of languages too—Miss Drew whom, the girls declared, thought and prayed in Latin and Greek and dwelt in spirit among the early Hellenes, who never tired of telling the girls about Pelasgic Greece and the marvelous Tyrinthian wall.
"Imagine a wall fifty feet high and thirty feet thick!" interpolated a wide-eyed girl with an irreverent giggle. "Imagine having to scale that to get out to a party!"
There was the sweet-faced French teacher, a widow by the name of Briais, and Miss Handel, the portly German instructress. The music teacher, Miss Blitz, who wore her hair in a wild bob and was really an exceptional performer on the piano, provided a great deal of innocent amusement for her pupils.
The most youthful of all the members of the faculty at Laurel Hall was Miss Talley, physical culture teacher. She was fresh from college, hardly more than a girl, and she led her pupils through gymnastic performances at a stiff pace that they sometimes found rather hard to match.
They liked her youth and energy, however, and the fact that she encouraged athletics.
It was Miss Talley who watched the girls at tennis and gave them points—she played a smashing game herself. It was Miss Talley who arranged swimming and rowing races among the girls of the different grades and herself was always ready to out-row or out-swim the best of them.
It was on the tennis courts that the girls from Woodford had their first run-in with Kate Speed's crony, the snappy Lottie Sparks.
"I'll say that girl fits her name," Nan had remarked after meeting Lottie on that first Monday of the opening of school. "Lottie Sparks! It ought to be 'Lottie Spitfire.' I bet that girl goes off like a load of dynamite at the slightest provocation."