her.

"I wish I knew shorthand," grumbled Ingred, comparing scribbles with
Verity as the girls tidied their hair for tea. "How anybody's expected
to get down all Miss Strong tells us, I can't imagine! It's impossible."

"I don't try," admitted Fil. "At least I do try--I put a bit here and
there, but I write so slowly, I'm only half-way through before she's
bounced on to something else, and I've missed the beginning of it. I
have to stop, too, sometimes, to think how to spell the words."

The others laughed, for Fil's spelling was proverbial in the form, and
was often of a purely phonetic character. Miss Strong had periodical
crusades to improve it, but generally gave them up as a bad job, and
recommended constant use of a dictionary instead.

"Though you can't go about the world with a dictionary perpetually under
your arm," she had remarked on the last occasion. "If you have to write
a letter in a hurry, and you begin 'Dear Maddam' and end 'Yours
trueley'--well! Please don't let anybody know you've been educated here,
that's all, or it will be a poor advertisement for the College!"

Ingred was not at all delighted to be still in Miss Strong's form. She
only moderately liked this mistress. Undoubtedly Miss Strong was a
clever teacher, but sarcasm was one of her favorite weapons of
discipline. Some of the girls did not mind it, indeed thought it rather
amusing, even when directed against themselves, and enjoyed it hugely
when someone else was the victim of the sally. Ingred, however, proud
and sensitive, writhed under the attacks of Miss Strong's sharp tongue,
and would often have preferred a punishment to a witticism. As a matter