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 "Oh, Mr. Bevans doesn't eat at the school. He has his own cook at the cottage."

The girls looked at one another blankly. They had never imagined such a calamity. They had assumed that in taking over the school he would do exactly as his aunt had done.

An even more alarming possibility now presented itself. "I suppose," said Sally, faintly, "that he'll take the Sacred Literature course to-morrow morning, won't he?"

Miss Hayes was gathering the room together with her eyes, preparatory to making the move, and her attention appeared to be on that as she answered: "No, Mr. Bevans isn't going to do any teaching at all. Miss Simmons will go on with the Sacred Literature course."

Fifteen buncoed seniors stared at one another in horror. At the beginning of the term they had all elected the stupidest course in the whole school—and as one of them remarked, that was saying a mouthful—on the confident assumption that the nephew would take up the aunt's work. Miss Hayes's cool announcement plunged them all into the deepest thought. Each, having resolved to give up the course, was inventing a plausible reason for dropping it.