Chapter Sixteen.
The Examination.
Four o’clock on the morning of Examination Monday. The clock on the wall chimed the hour, and Rhoda awoke with a start, and sat up wearily in bed. The pale, grey light already filled the room, and the birds clamoured tumultuously in the trees outside. Three hours before the gong rang—the last, the very last chance of preparing for the fray!
She slipped noiselessly out of bed, sponged her face with cold water, seized the eau-de-Cologne in one hand and a pile of books in the other, and settled herself against a background of cushions. There was silence in the room, broken only by fitful cries from Dorothy, who was given to discoursing in her sleep, and more than once in the course of the first half-hour Rhoda’s own eyes glazed over, and the lids fell. Nature was pleading for her rights, but each lapse was sternly overcome, and presently nerves and brain were fully awake, and battling with their task. She learned by heart passages marked as likely to be useful, searched to and fro for answers still unknown, and worked out imaginary calculations. One thing was no sooner begun than she recalled another which needed attention, and so on it went from arithmetic to Shakespeare, from Shakespeare to history, from history to Latin, back and forward, back and forward, until her head was in a whirl.
The clock struck six, the girl in the next cubicle murmured sleepily, “Such a noise! Something rustling!” and Rhoda held her breath in dismay. Her haste in turning over the leaves had nearly brought about discovery, but henceforth she moved with caution, turning from place to place with wary fingers. Her back ached despite the supporting cushions, and her head swam, but she struggled on until at last the roll of the gong sounded through the house, and the girls awoke with yawns and groans of remembrance.
“Black Monday! Oh! Oh! I wish I’d never been born!”
“Misery me, and I was having such a lovely dream, all about holidays and picnics, and walks on the sands—”
“I’ve had the most awful night, doing sums all the time, with the Examiner looking over my shoulder. My head is like a jelly!”
Then Tom’s voice arose in derisive accents. Happy Tom! who was well through her June Matric, and could afford to chaff the poor victims.