Fifty-Two Stories For Girls

by Unknown

I sat and watched for her, and presently she came in, but she was moved on to the form behind. She was in the Fourth Form, and I heard her name—Mabel Smith.

I had a good report at the end of the first term, and went home happy—very happy to get home again, for I had never been so long away before, and I found my little brothers grown out of knowledge. But the Christmas holidays were soon over, and I went back in a cold, snowy week; and London snow is a miserable spectacle, not like the lovely pure white covering which hides up all dirt and ugliness in the country.

However, I knew my way about by this time, and found my old familiar bus waiting for me, and the conductor greeted me with great friendliness. He was a most kind man, and always waited for me as long as he could.

This term we had a new mistress for mathematics, and I didn't like her a bit.

I was always very slow and stupid at mathematics, and the new mistress was so quick, she worked away like lightning, and I could not follow her. She would rush through a proposition in Euclid, proving that some figure was, or was not equal to some other figure, and leave me stranded vainly trying to understand the first proof when she was at the last, and I couldn't care, anyhow, whether one line could be proved equal to another or not, I felt it would be much simpler to measure it and have done with it. It was the same in arithmetic; she took us through innumerable step-fractions with innumerable steps, just as fast as she could put the figures down, and all I could do was to stare stupidly at the blackboard and hope that I might be able to worry some sense out of it all at home; and she gave us so much home-work that I had to toil till after ten at night, and then had to leave my sums half done, or neglect my other work altogether.

I was slow and stupid, I knew, but the others all suffered too, though not so much, and presently complaints were made by all the other mistresses that their work was not done, and all the girls had the same reason to give, the arithmetic took so long.

So Miss Vinton made out a time-table for our prep., and said we were to leave off when the time was up, whether we'd finished or not. It was a great relief, my hair was turning grey with the work and worry! But I did not get on at all with mathematics, and in the end of term exam. I came out very badly in that and in French.

As most of us had done badly in those subjects our poor madame and the mathematical mistress did not come back next term.

Miss Vinton gave us mathematics herself, and a splendid teacher she was, letting some daylight even into my thick head, which was not constructed for that kind of work, and her sister gave us French, and we really began to make progress. Some of the girls had done well before, those who sat near madame and talked to her, but most of us had not learnt much from her.

Altogether it was with regret that I saw the end of my school-year drawing near; and I was very anxious to do well in the final exams.