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“I have forgotten the exact wording of the topic,” wrote Madeline slowly, in a painstaking backhand that she resorted to in times of stress, “but ‘Matthew Arnold and the Ten-Minute Test’ occurs to me as an interesting point of departure. How would Matthew Arnold view a ten-minute exposition of his characteristic qualities by a class of young ladies (most of them deep-dyed Philistines)? I fancy he would say——”

Madeline had made her point and turned several neat sentences before the “remaining ten minutes” was exhausted. She folded her second sheet as she had her first, paused an instant before writing “Georgia Ames” on the outside, and giving both the papers to Babe to hand in, went out by the back door. Half an hour later she had forgotten all about Dr. Eaton in a heated pursuit of grasshoppers on the back campus. Biology was Madeline’s newest hobby.

She was late for English Essayists the next morning. The class had been called to order and Professor Eaton was beginning to read something to them. Madeline dropped into a seat near the door, found the place in her note-book, and shook her fountain-pen into working-order, before she realized that he was reading Georgia Ames’s remarks upon “Matthew Arnold and the Ten-Minute Test,” with evident liking for Georgia’s ideas. Some of the class got the point of the theme, and more did not. Madeline smiled inanely for the benefit of her neighbors, and wondered if the professor would try to pick out Georgia Ames. Apparently he had not even noticed the signature; for when he came to the end of the theme, he looked at it curiously, consulted his roll, and added the new name at the end of the list. Then, with a scathing comment upon the deadly commonplaceness of the other themes, he opened his portfolio and continued his unfinished lecture.