"Listen, girls. Isn't this lovely?" cried Mary, who had finished the note. "'I deeply regret the necessity of asking you to explain your many absences from English Essayists. I need not say that your work has been unusually satisfactory; but you know the Harding rule about cuts, doubtless better than I. Miss Stuart assures me that it is ironclad, and therefore I am left no choice but to hope that your absences have some good excuse--and that you have not lost interest in the course.