"Please, sir," she said awkwardly, "why--why are you not--not-m-married?" I rose and took up my hat. "I once kissed a girl behind the school door, Margaret," I said absently. She did not understand ... and when I come to think of it I am not surprised. * * * To-day was prize-giving day. Old Mr. Simpson made a speech. "Boys," he said, "study hard and you'll maybe be a minister like Mr. Gordon there." He paused. "Or," he continued, "if you don't manage that, you may become a teacher like Mr. Neill here." Otherwise the affair was very pathetic: the medallist, a girl, had already left school and was hired as a servant on a farm. And old Mr. Simpson did not know it; I thought it better not to tell the kindly soul. He spoke earnestly on success in life. I hate prizes. To-day, Violet Brown and Margaret Steel, usually the best of friends, are looking daggers at each other. To-morrow I shall read them the story of the Judgment of Paris. And what rubbish these books are! There isn't a decent piece of literature in the bunch--_Matty's Present_, _The Girl Who Came to School_. Jerusalem! V. The more I see of it the more I admire the co-education system. To me it is delightful to see boys and girls playing together. Segregate boys and you destroy their perspective. I used to find at the university that it was generally the English Public School Boy who set up one standard of morals for his sisters and another for the shop-girls. Co-education is the greatest thing in our State educational system. The bairns early learn the interdependence of the sexes; boys and girls early begin to understand each other. All danger of putting women on a pedestal is taken away; the boys find that the girls are ordinary humans with many failings ("Aw'll tell the mester!"), and many virtues. The girls find that boys ... well, I don't exactly know what the girls find. Seldom is there any over-familiarity. The girls have a natural protective aloofness that awes the boys; the boys generally have strenuous interests that lead them to ignore the girls for long periods. At present the sexes are very friendly, for love-making (always a holy thing with bairns), has come with spring; but in a few weeks the boys will be playing football or "bools," and they will not be seen in the girls' playground.