Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/65

 But fate was not so kind. Miss Marks was very thorough and efficient, and very different from Miss Bigelow. She never felt kindness for dullness, nor protection for failure. She considered it her duty to expose unprepared lessons, mistakes, and stupidity whenever she had the opportunity.

As soon as the pupils in the visiting division were settled, Miss Marks told them to take places at the blackboard and copy their prepared home-work (twelve sentences, she had been informed, on such and such a page), while she, in the meanwhile, continued with the recitation with her own division. Later the combined divisions would correct the copied sentences.

Felix hadn't a single sentence to copy! It was out of the question for him to attempt impromptu work in Latin composition. He stood in hopeless dejection before the great black, blank, space before him, chalk in one hand, book in the other, hot all over, painfully conscious of the rapid, efficient scratching going on on either side of him, painfully conscious of the disgrace about to befall him when the blank space before him was discovered with his name signed to it. Perhaps it would be well to tell Miss Marks that he was unprepared. He turned to do so. He tried to do so. But she wasn't looking at him. No one was looking at him.

It was when Felix realized that no one was looking