the room.

"Well, thank goodness it's over! I never want to write another word in
my life. My hand's stiff with cramp!" exclaimed the girl with the red
hair-ribbon to a sympathetic audience in the passage.

"It was awful! I didn't answer half the questions. My swastika isn't
worth its salt. I shall give it away!" mourned the owner of the mascot.

"They expected us to know so very much; we should be absolute
encyclopaedias if we had all that pat off at our fingers' ends!" sighed
the girl with the fair pigtail.

"How did you get on?" Winona asked the ruddy-haired girl, who was wiping
her spectacles nervously.

"Oh, I don't know. It's so hard to tell. I answered most of the
questions, but of course I can't say whether they're right or wrong.
Wasn't the Latin translation just too horrible? I yearned for a
dictionary. And some of the French grammar questions were absolute
catches!"

"We went on too long," said Winona. "It would have been much better to
spread the exam, over two days."

"Do you think so? I'd rather have 'sudden death' myself. It's such a
relief to feel it's finished. It would be wretched to have to begin
again to-morrow. I hardly slept a wink last night for thinking about it.
I'm going to try and forget it now."