She leaves her books in all parts of the school-room for Mary to put away, and her table drawer is one mass of confusion.

Her lessons she does well enough, I own, though what I should call much too fast; but have you looked at her work lately ?" "She does not work very well," said Margaret, who was at that moment, though Miss Winter did not know it, re-gathering a poor child's frock that Ethel had galloped through with more haste than good speed.
"She works a great deal worse than little Blanche," said Miss Winter, "and though it may not be the fashion to say so in these days, I consider good needlework far more important than accomplishments.

Well, then, Margaret, I should wish you only just to look at her writing." And Miss Winter opened a French exercise-book, certainly containing anything but elegant specimens of penmanship.

Ethel's best writing was an upright, disjointed niggle, looking more like Greek than anything else, except where here and there it made insane efforts to become running-hand, and thereby lost its sole previous good quality of legibility, while the lines waved about the sheet in almost any direction but the horizontal.

The necessity she believed herself under of doing what Harry called writing with the end of her nose, and her always holding her pen with her fingers almost in the ink, added considerably to the difficulty of the performance.