"What if there aren't any seats?" gasped Elnora.

"Classrooms are never half-filled, there will be plenty," was the
answer.

Elnora removed her hat. There was no place to put it, so she carried
it in her hand. She looked infinitely better without it. After several
efforts she at last opened the door and stepping inside faced a smaller
and more concentrated battery of eyes.

"The superintendent sent me. He thinks I belong here," she said to the
professor in charge of the class, but she never before heard the voice
with which she spoke. As she stood waiting, the girl of the hall passed
on her way to the blackboard, and suppressed laughter told Elnora that
her thrust had been repeated.

"Be seated," said the professor, and then because he saw Elnora was
desperately embarrassed he proceeded to lend her a book and to ask her
if she had studied algebra. She said she had a little, but not the same
book they were using. He asked her if she felt that she could do the
work they were beginning, and she said she did.

That was how it happened, that three minutes after entering the room
she was told to take her place beside the girl who had gone last to the
board, and whose flushed face and angry eyes avoided meeting Elnora's.
Being compelled to concentrate on her proposition she forgot herself.
When the professor asked that all pupils sign their work she firmly
wrote "Elnora Comstock" under her demonstration. Then she took her seat
and waited with white lips and trembling limbs, as one after another