“What possessed you,” she asked at last, “to write such a composition as that? Have you no respect for your teacher? have you no respect for your school? have you no respect for _me_? Miss Horton, you may mark Ernestine a failure in her conduct and her English, too. She will remain after school, and rewrite her composition along _more conservative_ lines. The class may now proceed with its studies.” And Miss O’Connell swept from the room. Well, Ernie had had her little joke. Poor child! it was all she could do to blink back the mortified tears as she felt Mary Hobart’s sympathetic hand in hers, and divined instinctively that the thoughts of every girl in the room were busy with her shattered record. “I am sorry, Ernestine,” said Miss Horton not unkindly, as she took up her pencil and opened the portentous covers of the Conduct Book. “Do you really think it was worth while?” Lulu Jennings snickered; but quickly recovered herself with a prim pursing of the lips. Apparently, she was the one person in the room to experience any touch of satisfaction in the public downfall of “the plaster saint.” Which speaks pretty well for Ernie’s popularity, it seems to me. “The mean _sneak_!” declared Mary Hobart indignantly, some half-hour later, to the little group of sympathisers who lingered in the schoolyard till Ernie should be released. “It was all a plot! And to think that I should have helped to lead Ernie into it! Well, I’m more determined than ever that she shall win the prize. We mustn’t let her feel too discouraged, girls! we mustn’t! The poor, silly darling!” And now, lest you mistake me for a wizard, I will confess that Mary came home with Ernie after school. The two girls talked the excitement over as they set the table for dinner, while I stood in the kitchen doorway and listened, potato-knife in hand, till I felt quite as if I had witnessed it all myself,—and so I have set it down here, though it is hard to snatch time on a Monday. Tuesday, January 6. Oh, dear! I am tired to-night. I have been ironing all day,—and I’m only seventeen. [Illustration: I stood in the kitchen doorway and listened] Sunday, January 11. You haven’t any idea how poor we are. It is half funny and half terrible,—trying to keep house for a family of six people on seven dollars a week! Just at first it did not seem impossible. There was a false impetus, so to speak; coal in the cellar, coffee, oatmeal, flour, etc., in the kitchen cupboard. For a while we were even able to keep up a semblance of our usual table, and Miss Brown did not seem to suspect. But she must find out soon. Will she leave us when she knows? What shall we do, if she does? Each meal is a crisis. I grow quite white and shaky before sounding the bell.