Miss Amanda Hill, teacher in the Middleville High School, sat wearily at her desk.

She was tired, as tired as she had ever been on any day of the fifteen long years in which she had wrestled with the problems of school life.

Her hair was iron gray and she bent a worn, sad, severe face over a mass of notes before her.
At that moment she was laboring under a perplexing question that was not by any means a new one.

Only this time it had presented itself in a less insidious manner than usual, leaving no loophole for charitable imagination.

Presently she looked up and rapped on her desk.
"These young ladies will remain after school is dismissed," she said, in her authoritative voice: "Bessy Bell--Rose Clymer--Gail Matthews--Helen Tremaine--Ruth Winthrop....