After the delightful dissipation of a whole day's holiday, Miss Birks demanded a period of solid work from her pupils, and deeming that she had sufficiently satisfied their craving for excitement, took no notice of either hints or headaches, but enforced preparation and practising with, as Dulcie expressed it, "a total lack of all consideration". Dulcie, never a remarkably hard worker at any season, was more than usually prone to "slack" in summer, and it needed the combined energies of Miss Birks, Miss Harding, and Mademoiselle to keep her up to the mark. It was more than ever necessary to maintain the standard at present, for examination week was drawing near, and this year several extra prizes were offered for competition. Mrs. Trevellyan had promised a beautiful edition of Tennyson's poems for the best paper on English literature, the Vicar added a handsome volume of _Pictures from Palestine_ for the most correct answers to Scripture History, and Mademoiselle herself proffered a copy of _Lettres de mon Moulin_ for the most spirited declamation of any piece of French poetry not less than two hundred lines in length, the quality of the accent to be particularly taken into account. These were in addition to the usual annual rewards for mathematics, languages, English history, music, drawing, and needlecraft, so that among so many various subjects each girl might feel that she had at least some chance of winning success. At the eleventh hour the Principal announced that a prize would be given for general improvement. "That's to make slackers like you buck up, Dulcie!" declared Annie Pridwell. "Really, I wish Miss Birks would offer a prize for pure English," said Jessie Macpherson, who happened to overhear. "The slang you VB talk is outrageous. Your whole conversation seems made up of 'ripping' and 'scrumptious' and 'spiffing' and other silly words that don't mean anything. I tell you, slang's going out of fashion, even at public schools, and you're behind the times." "Don't be a prig, Jessie. What else can I call Dulcie except a slacker? Am I to say she shows a languorous disinclination for close application, and advise her to exert her mental activities? It would sound like a 'Catechism' from a Young Ladies' Seminary of a hundred years ago!" "There is one comfort in having worked badly," admitted Dulcie. "If I make a spurt now, I shall show more 'marked improvement' than if I'd been jogging along steadily all the time." "Ah, but the tortoise won the race while the hare slept!" retorted Jessie. In view of the forthcoming music examination, practising was performed with double diligence, and from 6 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. the strains of Schumann's "Arabesque", Tschaikowsky's "Chanson Triste", or Rachmaninoff's "Prelude", the three test pieces, echoed pretty constantly through the house, in varying degrees of proficiency.