"I wish to goodness you wouldn't talk, Beth!" Agnes Stewart exclaimed. "We shall all get bad marks to-morrow."
"Then why do you listen?" Beth retorted.
"I can't help it," Agnes grumbled. "You fascinate me. I should have thought you were clever if I had only heard you talk, and not known what a duffer you are at your lessons."
"Well, she's not a duffer at thorough bass anyway," Rosa put in. "She only began this term, and she's a long way ahead even of some of the first. Old Tom's given her a little book to herself."
"I began thorough bass with the rest of you," Beth observed. "It's the only thing we started fair in. You are years ahead of me in all the other work."
The girls reflected upon this for a little.
"And you can write themes," Rosa finally asseverated.
"Oh, that's nothing," Beth protested. "Themes are easy enough. I could write them for the whole school."
"Well, that's no reason why you should put your nose in your cup every time you drink," Lucy Black, the sharpest shrimp of a girl in the class, said, grinning.
"I never did such a thing in my life," Beth exclaimed, turning crimson. "You'll say I eat audibly next."