Ester Ried Yet Speaking

class! I did not ask her, Mr. Durant; she invited herself."

Mr. Durant looked over at her, and tried to keep his eyes from smiling.

"She looks very diminutive in every way for such an undertaking. They will frighten her out before she commences, will they not?"

"I presume so; but I didn't know what to do. She wanted to come, and I could not tell her she must not."

"No, of course,--the occasion is too rare to lose. Very few people ask the privilege of trying that class. There is no teacher for them to-day; and your Mrs. Roberts must learn by experience that some things are more difficult than others. I will let her try it."

Meantime, "the boys" of the dreaded class were studying the new face. She was the only person not already seated before a class, and they naturally judged that she was to be their next victim. They looked at her and then at one another, and winked and coughed and sneezed and nudged elbows and giggled outright, every one of them,--meantime chewing