Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/67

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board, accompanied by monosyllabic exclamations, such as 'Mood! Tense! Careless! Case! Vocabulary! Inexcusable!' spitting out the single words explosively as if they were expletives, while the class watched and listened. Felix, his eyes upon the clock, had begun to think that his sentences might escape correction entirely, when Miss Marks skipped several intervening exercises on the board and approached Pamela Hyde's in the corner.

'One of our best students in Latin in the high-school,' she remarked, and proceeded to amaze the class with the best student's fantastic exhibition. With the exception of Pamela's first sentence there were scarcely three words in succession that escaped the chalk. Pamela's work fairly bristled with mistakes—absurd, ridiculous mistakes. And once an entirely different sentence from another exercise.

Every pupil in the room stared bewildered. What had happened to Pamela Hyde? She couldn't be playing a practical joke on Miss Marks, could she? No. Not Pamela. She wasn't the kind of girl to play practical jokes on anybody in authority. What was her motive? Felix knew before Miss Marks had reached Pamela's third sentence.

Three minutes later and the flaying chalk was stabbing at his sentences, underlining, with rapid accuracy, absurdity after absurdity identical to Pamela Hyde's. Blindly, trustfully, Felix had followed