misfortune, at any rate!"

A pile of foolscap paper with red-ruled margins, a clean sheet of white
blotting paper, and a penholder with a new nib lay ready. Each of the
other twenty victims was surveying a supply of similar material. On the
blackboard was chalked the word "Silence."

In a dead hush the candidates sat and waited. Exactly on the stroke of
nine Miss Bishop entered and handed a sheaf of printed questions to the
teacher in charge, who distributed them round the room. The subject for
the first hour was arithmetic. Winona read over her paper slowly. She
felt capable of managing it, all except the last two problem sums, which
were outside her experience. She knew it would mainly be a question of
accuracy.

"I'll work them each twice if I've only time," she thought, starting at
number one.

An hour is after all only made up of sixty minutes, and these seemed to
fly with incredible rapidity. The teacher on the platform had sternly
reproved a girl guilty of counting aloud in an agitated whisper,
threatening instant expulsion for a repetition of such an offense, but
with this solitary exception nobody transgressed the rules. All sat
quietly absorbed in their work, and an occasional rustle of paper or
scratch of a pen were the only sounds audible. At precisely five minutes
to ten the deity on the platform sounded a bell, and ordered papers to
be put together. She collected them, handed them to another mistress,
then without any break proceeded to deal out the questions for the next
hour's examination. This was in geography, and here Winona was not on
such sure ground. Granted that you are acquainted with certain rules in