whether I can write plainly." And the girl from Bohemia chuckled softly.

"What's the joke?" inquired Betty.

"Nothing," answered Madeline, "only I can't. Miss Felton made me spell
off every word of my Spanish examination paper, because she couldn't read
it, and I can't read my last theme myself," and she laughed again
merrily.

"Let's see it," demanded Betty, reaching for the paper at the top of the
pile on Madeline's desk.

"That's next week's," said Madeline. "I thought I'd do them both while I
was at it. But this week's is funnier."

"This week's" proved to be an absurd incident founded upon the
illegibility of Henry Ward Beecher's handwriting. It was cleverly told,
but the cream of its humor lay in the fact that Madeline's writing, if
not so bad as Mr. Beecher's, was certainly bad enough.

"Maybe Miss Raymond can make out what he really wrote, but I've forgotten
now, and I can't," said Madeline, tossing the theme back on the pile.
"And I didn't try to write badly either. It just happened."

Everything "just happened" with Madeline Ayres. Betty had said that
things fell into place for her, and people seemed to have a good deal the
same pleasant tendency. But if they did not, Madeline seldom exerted
herself to make them do her bidding. She admired hard work, and did a
good deal of it by fits and starts. But she detested wire-pulling, and
took an instant dislike to Eleanor Watson because some injudicious person