Mr Minns, the mathematical master, was built on wires, and expected one rapid explanation of the most complex rule to make it clear as crystal. After twenty years spent in teaching, he _still_ professed to be prostrated with horror at each fresh exhibition of feminine obtuseness, and would groan, and writhe, and push his fingers through his hair, until it stood up round his head like a halo. He was Dreda's special _bete noire_, for, like many girls who excel in literature and composition, she detested the sight of a sum and had never grown beyond the stage of counting on her fingers beneath the table. If it had not been for Susan's laboriously patient explanations, nothing could have saved her from the most hopeless humiliation; but Susan had a gift of apt and fitting words, and of inventing illustrations which showed daylight through the thickest mist. She rose early and worked late in order to have time to spare for her duties as coach, and Dreda was lavish in gratitude. "You really _are_ a saint! What should I do without you? Expire of pure misery and despair. As it is, I'm dying of overwork. I've a buzzy muzzy feeling in my brain which must mean something bad. Softening, I believe. It _does_ come on from overstrain!" Susan would smile, her quietly humorous smile, at these exaggerated statements, refusing to feel any anxiety about the health of such a blooming invalid. Apart from arithmetic, however, Dreda made wonderful progress in her studies. Her native quickness of wits stood her in good stead; she learnt easily, and seized nimbly on salient points, so that, though her knowledge was superficial, she was always ready with an answer, and could enlarge so cleverly on what she _did_ know, that the gaps of ignorance remained unsuspected. Susan, the prudent, shook her head over this juggling with fate, and foretold confusion in the coming examinations; but Dreda was content to sun herself in the present atmosphere of approbation and leave the future to take care of itself. Given a free hand by her parents, she had entered her name for every examination on the school list, and hardly a day passed that she did not propose a new scheme or exploit to her companions. The time for these propositions was generally the cherished half-hour after tea, when the fourth form girls gathered round the fire in the study to chat over the doings and happenings of the day. Then Dreda was in her element, and every day, as it seemed, was filled with a fresh ambition. "When does your school magazine come out next?" "Never! Haven't got one to `come out.'" "_Haven't got one_? A school without a magazine! How disgraceful! I should be ashamed to confess it. Why haven't you?" "Too much fag!" Dreda gasped with horror.