"Help! How are you going to divide twenty-six by four? It works out at six and a half. Who's to be the half girl?"
"Oh! They'll make it seven on one afternoon and six the next, I expect."
"That's not fair! It's throwing too much work on those six and not enough on the seven. It's opposed to all the instincts of co-operation and justice which Gibbie has laboured so hard to instil into me."
"Don't see how the Bumble can manage otherwise, unless she chops a girl in half. No, I predict you'll be chosen among a select six, and have to pour out tea and hand cakes with one-sixth extra power laid on, and your conversation carefully modulated to your hearers."
"Please to remember that this is a finishing school!" mocked Ardiune. "Don't on any account shock the neighbourhood by an unseemly exhibition of vulgar slang!"
"It'll slip out, I know, when I'm not thinking," groaned Raymonde.
On the first afternoon of the geological course, an audience of about twenty visitors augmented the usual gathering in the lecture hall. They were accommodated with the best seats, and the school occupied the third and fourth rows. Directly in front of Raymonde sat an elderly lady in a large black hat trimmed with cherries, which bobbed temptingly over the brim. She appeared to take an interest in her surroundings, glanced about the room, and turned a reproving eye on Raymonde, who ventured to whisper to Aveline. With Miss Gibbs hovering in the background with a now-mind-you-keep-up-the-credit-of-the-school expression, the girls hardly dared even to blink, but Aveline managed to write: "What a Tartar in front!" on a slip of paper, and hand it to her chum.
The Professor, bland as ever, was coming into the room and hanging a geological map over the blackboard. He smiled broadly, showing his large white teeth to the uttermost, and, after a few preliminary remarks of welcome to the visitors, plunged into a description of the earth's crust.
All went well for a while; then an untoward incident happened. The lady with the cherries in her hat, who had possibly taken cold, or was affected by the pollen in the flowers upon the table, sneezed violently, not only once, but twice, and even a third time.
"Three's for a wedding! Is it Gibbie?" whispered Raymonde the incorrigible.