As a wind-up to the festivities, everyone made an attempt to dance Sir Roger de Coverley--a very funny proceeding indeed on the ice, where strokes had to be substituted for _chassés_, and the ranks were apt to be abruptly broken by someone sitting down suddenly, with more swiftness than grace. Miss Reade and Miss Bardsley were heading the line, and passing under the upraised hands of Maude Farnham and Rose Turner, two of the prefects, when unluckily Rose tipped a little too far forward and lost her balance. Down she came with a crash, and in her fall she clutched wildly at Miss Bardsley, and not only brought both the teachers to their knees, but upset six couples who were following close behind and could not stop. There was quite a tangle of prostrate figures upon the ice, and much laughter as the girls picked themselves up, and tried to re-form the lines. Amidst the general scramble, nobody noticed for a moment that Miss Bardsley was really hurt; when she attempted to rise, however, her foot was so painful that she sank back with a groan. "I'm afraid I must have sprained my ankle!" she exclaimed. It was a case for "first aid", and the members of the ambulance class had very soon shown the advantage of their training by taking off the teacher's skates and boots, improvising a stretcher, and carrying her into the house, where Miss Drummond set to work at once with hot fomentations and bandages. Unfortunately, the mischief was greater than anyone supposed, for when the doctor from Chetbourne arrived next morning he declared that a bone was broken, and that the ankle must be put into splints. Naturally, this was a very awkward occurrence just at the beginning of the term. Miss Bardsley would be disabled for some weeks, and in the meantime, who would take her Form? For a few days one of the prefects did duty, while Miss Drummond wrote post-haste to a scholastic agency, to secure a teacher as locum tenens. It was difficult to find anyone who was disengaged and could come at so short a notice, and Miss Webb, the mistress who finally arrived, was hardly to the taste of the Fourth Form. She had been a private governess in a family, and was not accustomed to class teaching; and the girls discovered in the first half-hour that she had not the slightest notion of how to enforce discipline. "She told me to stop talking, and when I didn't, she simply took no notice!" chuckled Dora Maxwell. "And she said: 'Ursula, dear, please do not fidget with your pencil,' in such a mild, apologetic little voice!" laughed Ursula. "Miss Bardsley would have glared, and said: 'Ursula, take a forfeit!'" "She doesn't know anything, really, about the lessons," said Aldred scornfully. "She kept looking at the book all the time, to follow what we were saying." "And you remember that sum that came out so funnily? I'm sure the answer was wrong in the book, and I wanted her to work it on the blackboard, but she wouldn't," put in Dora.