"Then your other subjects must have been extremely good to make up for
it. I was told that we should probably stand or fall by maths. You were
ripping in everything else, I suppose? Scored no end?"

Winona did not answer the question. She was conscious that none of her
papers could have merited such an eulogium. She envied Garnet's grasp of
the form work. Try as she would, her own exercises and translations were
poor affairs, and her ill-trained memory found it difficult to marshal
the enormous number of facts that were daily forced upon it. Miss
Huntley at first was patient, but as the weeks wore on, and Winona still
wallowed in a quagmire of amazing mistakes, she grew sarcastic. The girl
winced under some of her cutting remarks. Apparently the mistress
imagined her failure to be due to laziness and inattention, and sooner
than confess that she could not understand the work, Winona was silent.
She never mentioned the long hours she spent poring over her books in
Aunt Harriet's dining-room. After all, it was better to be thought idle
than stupid. But it was humiliating to feel that she was counted among
the slackers of the Form, while Garnet was already winning laurels. The
contrast between the two scholarship holders could not fail to be
noticed.

Miss Huntley (privately known to the Form as "Bunty") was a clever, but
rather remorseless teacher. She had been on the staff since the opening
of the school two years before, and she was determined at all costs to
maintain the high standard inaugurated at its foundation. She was
herself the product of High School education, and knew to the last
scruple how much to require from girls in V.a. To those who
appeared to be really trying their best she was ready to give
intelligent help, but she had no mercy for slackers. She was possessed