"He looks about as much like a miner as Pa Belding," Laura declared.

There was too much going on just then, however, for Mother Wit to try out
the thought that had come to her mind regarding this man. All these
interests had to be sidetracked for school and lessons. And just at this
time recitations seemed to be particularly hard. With rehearsals for the
play, and all, mere knowledge was very difficult to acquire.

"I know I'm not half prepared in physics," wailed Nellie Agnew, as she and
other juniors trooped into school one day, two weeks before Christmas.

"And I," said Jess Morse, "know about as much regarding this political
economy as I do about sweeping up the Milky Way with a star brush."

"How poetic!" cried Laura, laughing. "I wonder if we all are as well
prepared?"

"They expect too much of us," declared Dora Lockwood.

"Much too much!" echoed her sister.

"I wonder," said Laura, "if we don't expect too much of the teachers?"

In the physics recitation Nellie Agnew, as she prophesied, came to grief.

Miss Carrington seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of whom to call on at
such times. She seemed aware that Nellie had not prepared her lesson
properly. It might be that the wary teacher read her pupils' faces.
Nellie's was so woebegone that it was scarcely possible to overlook the