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.