“How I’d love to go and learn farming when I leave school!” she ventured to remark as they drove home.

“It needs brains!” returned Aunt Harriet, rather snappily.  “You mustn’t imagine it’s all tea in the garden and playing with fluffy chickens.  To run such a holding intelligently requires a clever capable head.  Your examination’s quite enough for you to think about at present.  If you’re to have any chance at all of passing, it will take your whole energies, I assure you!”

Winona, duly snubbed, held her peace.

CHAPTER XVIII

A Friend in Need

Under the coaching of Miss Goodson the Sixth Form had settled down to grim work.  Twelve girls were to present themselves for examination for entering Dunningham University, and though the teacher naturally concentrated her greatest energies on this elect dozen, the rest by no means slipped through her intellectual net.  There were stars among the candidates of whom she might feel moderately certain, and there were also laggers whose success was doubtful.  In this latter category she classed Winona.  Poor Winona still floundered rather hopelessly in some of her subjects.  A poetic imagination may be a delightful inheritance and a source of infinite enjoyment to its owner, but it does not supply the place of a good memory.  Examiners are prosaic beings who require solid facts, and even the style of a Macaulay or a Carlyle would not satisfy them unless accompanied by definite answers to their set questions.  By a piece of unparalleled luck, Winona had secured and retained her County Scholarship, but her powers of essay writing were not likely to serve her in such good stead again.  She often groaned when she thought of the examinations.  Miss Bishop, Aunt Harriet, and her mother would all be so disappointed if she failed, and alas! her failure seemed only too probable.

“Miss Goodson doesn’t tell me plump out that I’ll be plucked, but I can see she thinks so!” confided Winona to Garnet one day.

“Then show her she is wrong!”

“Not much chance of that, I’m afraid, but I’m doing my level best.  I get up at six every morning, and slave before breakfast.”

“So do I, but I get such frightful headaches,” sighed Garnet.  “I’ve been nearly mad with them.  My cousin took me to the doctor yesterday.  He says it’s my eyes.  I shan’t be at school to-morrow.  I have to go to Dunningham to see a specialist.”

“Poor old girl!  You never told me about your headaches.”

“You never asked me!  I’ve seen so little of you lately;”