"It's too bad," said Alice. "I'll tell you afterward how it happened,
Bessie. I am glad you waited for me. They always scold you so much for
being late that they will not take so much notice of me. May I slip into
my place in form behind you?"

"If you like," said, Bessie.

They entered the great schoolhouse, turned down a long corridor,
deposited their hats and jackets on the pegs provided for the purpose,
and went into the schoolroom just when the pupils were filing into their
different classes.

Both girls had marks against their names for unpunctuality. Alice
frowned and fidgeted, turned scarlet, glanced nervously at her
fellow-pupils, but Bessie took the matter with her wonted calm. Soon she
forgot all about it. She became absorbed in her different studies, each
one of which she had prepared with extreme attention. As she answered
question after question her great, full, dreamy eyes seemed to lighten
with hidden fire, her face lost its plainness, the intellect in it
transformed it. One or two other girls in the class watched her with a
slight degree of envy.

Bessie was very high up in the school. As usual she quickly rose to the
head of the form; this position she kept without the slightest
difficulty during lesson after lesson.

Alice, muddled already by that mark for unpunctuality, got through her
work badly; as Bessie rose in the class Alice went down. At the end of
the morning's work the two girls were far as the poles asunder.