It was the custom of Miss Leland's school to hold the mid-year examinations before the Christmas holidays, early in December, so that the teachers and the girls might enjoy their holidays without the shadow of that depressing necessity hanging over them, and so that they might apply themselves to the preparation for them while they were still in the habit of studying. Miss Leland held the opinion that after the gay indolence of the holiday season, and when the girls were still in the state of homesickness and lassitude following their return to school, they were much less interested in making good marks, and much less capable of applying themselves.
Thus, the first week of a snowy December found the entire school in that state of tension which seizes any body of young people when a hostile body of older people is bent upon finding out how much they know.
"History from nine to twelve to-morrow," groaned Charlotte. "I've reread the whole volume. I've crammed dates until I don't know whether Columbus discovered America in 1492 or 1776. I've 'rastled' with Free Silver, and I haven't the faintest notion what the trouble was about. A long, long time ago I knew whether Maryland was a Charter colony or not, but now I never expect to know again. I could write everything I know about this great and glorious country in two minutes, and it would be quite wrong at that, and the thought that we are expected to know enough to require three solid hours for writing it out is driving me rapidly into a state of chronic melancholia."
"What happened in 1812, Charlotte?" demanded Nancy in a dazed voice. "Something happened then, but I don't know what."
"Why, that was the year that Washington said 'Beyond the Alps lies Italy.' Which was quite true. And even if he didn't say it then, it would have been true, so you can't go far wrong there," replied Charlotte. "Nancy, kindly fold up your book. I am going to flunk, and I won't have you pass. If you try to study any more I'm going to sing the Marseillaise at the top of my voice."
"I think I will stop. I really do know my history, but I'm forgetting it the more I try to study."
After dinner that night, the living-room was empty during the usual hour for recreation, nearly all the girls having gone to their room either to study, or simply as a matter of form, since it was considered highly undiplomatic, to say the least, to appear as if you were so sure of the outcome of your examinations that you felt privileged to take life easily.
What they did, once they were in the privacy of their own rooms, was, of course, strictly their own business. Two or three, who believed that rest was essential, had solemnly gone to bed. A dozen or even more of the seriously inclined had hung "Busy" signs on the panel of their doors, through the transoms of which the greenish illumination of the students' lamps burning within told their own story. The others, philosophically believing that if they were going to pass they would, and if they were destined to flunk they would do so in spite of the best-intentioned efforts at study, were cheerfully whiling away the two hours of grace in subdued revelry.
Alma, who had every reason to doubt that she would shine in her examinations unless she made a superhuman effort at cramming, and who, at the same time, was unable to comfort herself with Mildred's philosophical indifference, was curled up on her bed, her fingers in her ears, struggling to make the lines she read convey some sense to her weary brain.
"I say, Milly, will you ask me some questions?" she suggested at length, lifting a weary face from her book. "I don't know what I know."