"Because my three cousins were here, and they're so tremendously clever. It's rather hard when you're not very bright yourself, and the teachers keep saying: 'You mean to tell me you can't learn this, and you an Ellis!' I think they must have taken my share of the brains in the family. At any rate it's not quite fair to blame me because I can't do everything they did. Ethel won a scholarship for Newnham, and I never even scrape through the easiest class exam as a rule. I don't care much. Mother says I must be a home girl and like sewing. I'm glad I don't get my pocket money by my marks." "Oh, but does anybody?" "Yes, I knew a girl who did. Her father gave her sixpence every week she was top, and nothing at all if she was lower than halfway in the class. He said it was to make her work." "Before I came to school I used to get my pocket money for doing things," said Brenda. "I had a penny for every hour I practised, so if I wanted to save up I used to do a little extra at the piano; then there was a penny a week for wearing my gloves, and another penny for using the back stairs, and a halfpenny for eating salt, and another halfpenny if I remembered to wipe my boots. I rather liked it." "I don't think it was nice at all," declared Marian. "It was bribing you to do what you ought to have done in any case." "Yes, so it was," echoed Gwennie. "We always wipe our boots." "Oh, you two are perfect, of course!" said Brenda. "You never do anything wrong! What about that French book which was lost last week?" "It wasn't my fault or Gwennie's either," said Marian, rising and putting an end to a conversation which threatened to become too personal. "Somebody must have borrowed it without asking us. I'm going in now to learn my verbs." And she departed, leaving the others laughing, for poor Marian did not always succeed in living entirely according to her excellent precepts and "Practice what you preach" is a motto held in high estimation by schoolgirls.