She had smiled in self-confidence.  Who ever knew Marjorie West to miss in spelling?  And had not her father looked over her examples last night and pronounced them correct?  But on her way to school the paper on which the examples were solved had dropped out of her Geography, and she had been wholly absorbed in the “Lucy” book during the time that she had expected to study the test words in spelling.  And the overwhelming result was doing three examples on the board, after school, and writing seven hundred words.  Oh, how her back ached and how her wrist hurt her and how her strained eyes smarted!  Would she ever again forget amateur, abyss, accelerate, bagatelle, bronchitis, boudoir and isosceles?

Rie Blauvelt had written three words one hundred times, laughed at her, and gone home; Josie Grey had written isosceles one hundred times, and then taken up a slate to help Marjorie; before Marjorie was aware Josie had written abyss seventy-five times, then suspecting something by the demureness of Josie’s eyes she had snatched her slate and erased the pretty writing.

“You’re real mean,” pouted Josie; “he said he would take our word for it, and you could have answered some way and got out of it.”

Marjorie’s reply was two flashing eyes.

“You needn’t take my head off,” laughed Josie; “now I’ll go home and leave you, and you may stay all night for all I care.”

“I will, before I will deceive anybody,” resented Marjorie stoutly.

Without another word Josie donned sack and hood and went out, leaving the door ajar and the cold air to play about Marjorie’s feet.

But five o’clock came and the work was done!

More than one or two tears fell slowly on the neat writing on Marjorie’s slate; the schoolroom was cold and she was shivering and hungry.  It would have been such a treat to read the last chapter in the “Lucy” book; she might have curled her feet underneath her and drawn her shawl closer; but it was so late, and what would they think at home?  She was ashamed to go home.  Her father would look at her from under his eyebrows, and her mother would exclaim, “Why, Marjorie!” She would rather that her father would look at her from under his eyebrows, than that her mother would say, “Why, Marjorie!” Her mother never scolded, and sometimes she almost wished she would.  It would be a relief if somebody would scold her tonight; she would stick a pin into herself if it would do any good.

Her photograph would not be in the group next time.  She looked across at the framed photograph on the wall; six girls in the group and herself the youngest—­the reward for perfect recitations and perfect deportment for one year.  Her father was so proud of it that he had ordered a copied picture for himself, and, with a black walnut frame, it was hanging in the sitting-room at home.  The resentment against herself was tugging away at her heart and drawing miserable lines on her brow and lips—­on her sweet brow and happy lips.