"I hope--" then she paused for a smile appeared upon every face bringing the abstracted lady back to earth. It was Beverly who asked innocently: "Excuse me, Miss Baylis, but did you tell us to begin our literature papers at the ninety-fifth line of Pope's Essay on Man: 'Hope springs eternal'?" "We ended our literature recitation ten minutes ago, Beverly. If you were so inattentive as to miss what I said that is your misfortune," was the austere retort. Nevertheless, the shot had told. Ten more minutes of the period slipped by, nay, crawled by, in which Miss Baylis darting from one victim to another bent upon reaching their vulnerable points. Then it came, Electra Sanderson's turn to recite. Now Electra Sanderson was distinctly of the nouveau riche. She came from an eastern city where money is the god of things. Why her father, a kindly soul who had risen from hod carrier to contractor, happened to choose Leslie Manor for his youngest daughter must remain one of the unanswered questions. Perhaps "mommer" made the selection on account of the name which had appealed to her. Manors or manners were all one to her. At any rate, Electra (christened Ellen) was a pupil at Miss Woodhull's very select school. A big, good-natured, warm-hearted, generous, dull _slouchy_ girl of seventeen, who never could and never would "change her spots," but was inevitably destined to marry someone of her own class, rear a flourishing family and settle down into a commonplace, good-natured matron, Leslie Manor nevertheless, and notwithstanding. Miss Woodhull and her staff might polish until exhausted. The only result would be the removal of the plating and the exposure of the alloy beneath. Electra didn't care a whoop for the old fogies who had lived and ruled in England generations before she was born. Indeed, she would not have wept had England and all the histories ever written about her disappeared beneath the sea which surrounded that country. What she wanted now was to get out of that classroom and into the dining room visible from the window near which she was sitting, and through which she gazed longingly, for there could be found something tangible. Her thoughts had been in the dining room for the past five minutes, consequently she was not aware that Sally had surreptitiously reached toward her from the seat behind, laid hold of about eighteen inches of the lacing of her Peter Thomson (dangling as usual) and while Petty Gaylord, sitting next Sally, was secretly reading a letter concealed behind her book, had made fast Electra's Peter Thomson lacing to Petty's boot lacing, _likewise_ adrift, and then soberly awaited developments. Sally could manage to do more things unobserved than any other girl in the school, though she had found a fair rival in Beverly. Thus lay the train "of things as they ought (not) to be" when Miss Baylis fired her first shot at poor Electra.