Martine and Grace had gone into a small room off the main schoolroom, where a certain amount of conversation was permitted to two girls who happened to be studying together. They were not expected, however, to wander far from the lesson they had set out to prepare, and idle conversation, if overheard, would have carried a reproof. Yet the special essay to which Grace had referred was for the time uppermost in the minds of most of Miss Crawdon's pupils, and to Martine the necessity for writing it was peculiarly disagreeable; she did not pretend to be literary; her brightness and energy expressed themselves in far different ways. She could talk better than most girls, but when it came to putting her thoughts on paper in an extended form, she was really at sea. No one sympathized with her when she protested that it was absolutely impossible for her to write a ten-page essay on the question "Is the pen mightier than the sword?" "Why, it's what I call the simplest kind of a subject," said Priscilla. "We all know that war is a terrible thing and ought to be done away with, and that a good book accomplishes a great deal more than the most famous battle. That's all the subject means." "Oh, is it?" queried Martine, somewhat sarcastically. "Well, I'd like to see you fill ten large foolscap pages proving it." "That's easy enough; just get your thoughts together." "I can get a few of them together, but when it comes to putting them on paper, that's quite another thing." Yet in the face of Martine's evident despair, Priscilla still insisted that the subject was not difficult, and that if Martine would simply collect her thoughts, she would soon find words to fill ten pages. "Of course you've got to look up authorities on peace and war and some of the poets like Whittier and Tennyson, and Longfellow's 'Ship of State,' and say something about 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and look over your English history pretty carefully." "Oh, Priscilla, with all my other lessons? It's quite natural for you to know where to find all these authorities and poems, but it's quite another thing for me, and there's likely to be some splendid skating this month; and it's odious to have to stay cooped up in the house when the afternoons are short enough at the best." But at last Martine had to yield to necessity, and less than a week before the day when the essays were to be handed in she sat down for one last, and it may be said first, great effort. Lucian, happening in from Cambridge, laughed as he saw her forlorn face as she sat at a table littered with papers. "What a ridiculous fuss," he cried, "about a little composition." "It isn't a little composition; it's an essay." "Well, what's the difference? You ought to have daily themes, then you'd know." "We do, we have them once a week, every Monday morning." "Daily themes,--once a week!" and again Lucian laughed.