"I don't give trouble _every_ morning; but it's so tiresome, gran'ma, to begin exercises every day the same way." "I should think so, if several hundred girls _will_ go on repeating exactly the same texts year in and year out." "Well, when they scolded us for never learning new ones, I tried to oblige them--I did, indeed." "Hum! Miss Appleby tells me you appeared next day with 'Jesus wept.'" Val grinned, and then grew grave. "They are very hard to please. They want something we hadn't all said a thousand times, and something longer than--" "Naturally." "You can't _think_ how furious they are now if we happen on the same thing. I do my best to oblige them. I suppose a--Miss Appleby--" Val tried to find out from the non-committal face whether the principal had entered upon this. If not, so much confessing all in one day was perhaps overdoing it. "Well," said her grandmother, "Miss Appleby _tells_ me--I can hardly credit it--that you stood up in your place yesterday morning and recited, 'Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.'" "Well, it wasn't _me_ that laughed; and I told Miss Appleby it was in the Bible right enough." "Yes. Well, I'll pick out your texts for you in future." She spoke with charming geniality, and a glint through her glasses. "Now go and get your lessons for to-morrow." After the failure of Miss Beach to have Val disgraced and expelled, the girl felt that though her grandmother might herself abuse her, she would not permit any one else to do so. The early years of warfare merged by degrees, and in spite of lapses, into a less lawless scheme of life.