"You don't think, my dear; you don't reflect. Your brain would help you out, but you don't give it a chance. It's what I am always saying to this room--it's not cram you need, it's intelligence! Use your reason! Cultivate your faculties! Now, then, I'll tell you what I'll do!"--she raised her voice suddenly, and swung round in her seat. "I'll give you girls an examination myself. You need some practice before the real business begins, and it will be just the thing for this wet afternoon. Get out your books and pencils and I'll dictate the questions. It's to be a `General Intelligence' paper, and the examiner's instructions are-- use your wits! They will not be the ordinary blunt, straightforward questions manufactured by the masculine mind, and intended mainly for the coarse, masculine ability, but full of depth and subtlety, so that they will require careful consideration. If you go scribbling down your answers before you have read the questions, you'll be sorry, that's all; but don't say you were not warned. Now, then, are you ready? ... We will begin our studies to-day, young ladies, with a problem in calculation!" She deepened her voice into such an accurate imitation of the Arithmetical Mistress as filled her listeners with delight. "Attention to the board!--If a room were 20 feet long, 13 feet broad, 11 feet high, and 17 feet square, how much Liberty wall-paper 27 inches wide would be required to paper it, allowing 5 feet square for the fireplace and seven by three for the door?" The girls wrote down the question, not, however, without some murmurs of protest. "If there is one kind of sum I hate more than another, it's these horrid old wall-papers!" declared Bertha Stacey. "I shall never be a paper- hanger, so I don't see why I should worry my head. I don't call _this_ General Intelligence." "I expect we shall have a taste of most subjects; but really, Tom, really now--the room could not be 17 feet square if your other measurements were right!" argued Irene, who knew arithmetic to be her strong point, and was not sorry to impress the fact on her companions. "You have made a mistake." She expected the examiner to be discomfited, but Tom fixed her with a glittering eye, and demanded if perchance she had _seen_ the room in question, since she was so positive. "No, of course not, but then-- You know quite well--" "Well, I _have_, so perhaps you will allow me to know better. Go on, young ladies, and the next one who dares to raise any objections gets ten bad marks to begin her list. I must have perfect submission. Five minutes allowed for working!"