Though it kept her brains continually on the stretch, Lesbia found the mental atmosphere bracing. She began to enjoy the intellectual conversation round the breakfast- or supper-table. At first she was quite at sea regarding the topics discussed, but after a while she grew to understand and even sometimes to offer an opinion of her own. She had never in her life before imagined that so many societies and committees existed as those to which Mr. and Mrs. Patterson devoted a large part of their energies. This difference in the brain-stimulating activity of her new home could not fail to express itself in Lesbia's school work. She was not clever in the sense of having a retentive memory, but she now showed more brightness in answering questions and her essays were more original. Miss Pratt, ruthless towards "slackers" or "dullards", slowly relaxed a tithe of her irony. "I really believe, Lesbia Ferrars, you're beginning at last to realize that a human head holds something called a brain," she remarked pointedly one day. "Many girls seem to think learning is like receiving a phonographic impression. They reel it off again at exams, with as little intelligence as a gramophone. We don't want the barrel-piano style of work in this form. We want cultivated brains that can reason as well as state facts, not bunglers who haven't the sense to think." Her pince-nez, which for a wonder had fallen quite approvingly on Lesbia, glared in the direction of Lizzie Logan. Poor Lizzie was the champion blunderer of the form, and only the previous day, in the ambulance lesson, when asked how she would apply artificial respiration to a part-drowned patient who had broken both his arms, gasped in utter consternation, and had nervously fluttered forth: "I should work his legs about," an answer which drew forth an absolute deluge of scorn from her indignant teacher. It was Miss Pratt, always anxious to work in the direction of intellectual uplift, who suggested to Miss Tatham that the school might get up some private theatricals for the end of the term. She constituted herself stage-manager, and was licensed to pick her stars from any form she pleased. "I don't mind whether I choose seniors or juniors," she announced. "I want girls who can _act_, not wooden dummies. I shall have test rehearsals, and reject all those who haven't the proper dramatic fire about them. Any candidate will have to play up or leave the boards." The honour of a place in Miss Pratt's "Company" was sufficiently great to attract many would-be performers, but her standards were strict, and the elimination process a severe one. Lesbia, mindful of the many squashings she had received in class, and seeing even Marion Morwood turned down for incompetence, did not dare to present herself for the ordeal. "Miss Pratt would probably only laugh at me and say, 'You! Well really, who next?'" she confided to Marion. And Marion, who was suffering from the disappointment of rejection, agreed with her.