What does plus and minus mean in

What does plus and minus mean in aft. “Haven’t you anything to say for yourself?” snapped the man. “Is Bob right?”,"It's a blessing we finished ourselves up to the last notch at home," said Patricia, with wide eyes of dismay for the throngs at the two mirrors. "We haven't a chance to get a peep here, unless we stay all night. Is my headpiece on all right, Elinor? I feel all askew after that crush.","Oh, Mona, what courage you showed! Just imagine staying in the library when you found yourself face to face with a person you never expected to see, and in the dead of night, with every one sound asleep! In your case I should either have fainted or rushed back to my bedroom again as fast as my feet could carry me; and I believe," says Dorothy, with conviction, "I should so far have forgotten myself as to scream every inch of the way.",While high in air, amid the rising storm,,"She had made up her mind that you would be insupportable, and she couldn't forgive you because you weren't," says that astute young man, with calm conviction. "Don't you be taken in, Mona."，Then she knows she is speaking to "the Australian," (as she has heard him called), and, lifting her head, examines his face with renewed interest. Not a pleasant face by any means, yet not altogether bad, as she tells herself in the generosity of her heart.，Elinor sat down in surprise. "Oh, but I can't," she protested. "I can't sing at all. Miss Pat——"，Billy was silent. Should he tell the truth and say that he had carved Ann's initials on the bench and those of Walter Watland beneath them at that young lady's pleading request? No!Perhaps the fact that Mannel came from a home where Russian was the language in use and that he knew little English, accounted for his abnormal seriousness during school hours. He could not be absolutely sure what was being said or what might be done to him. Perhaps some cruel elder brother, before Mannel had even started his education, had explained to him in voluble Russian that dreadful pains and penalties were likely to follow the slightest deviation from the paths of virtue. Certain it is that he kept a close watch on the teacher, and that none of her slightest movements escaped him. Though his general appearance might cause mirth in others, he himself seldom smiled. Day by day he sat in his little front seat grasping slate and pencil in chubby hands, gazing earnestly at the sums on the blackboard as he copied them down. Afterward he worked these with fitting solemnity. To him they appeared to be of the greatest difficulty and of national importance. Sometimes he wrote endless rows of letters on his slate. Sometimes he made nondescript figures out of plasticine or drew patterns on his slate or counted beads. At other times, grievous to relate, when he felt sure the teacher was otherwise engaged and could not possibly see him, he drew fierce triangular cats with four or perhaps five stiff, geometrical legs and rampant tails.

She continued to stare at him. Her figure still seemed to shrink as though in her first recoil when he tried to take her hand. Her face then suddenly underwent a change, her mouth relaxed what in homely features might have been called its wild grin; she frowned; her eyes took an unsettled look. There was something in her countenance that could hardly have failed to arrest the attention of any one who had a tolerable acquaintance with the insane. Mr Lawrence seemed to see nothing but Lucy Acton in her beauty.,Billy whistled. "But fifty sticks, Maurice! It's almost more'n she'll need, don't you think?","Yes, let us," says Mona, gayly.,"No, I haven't, if that's romance. Of course there was nothing for it but to shut my eyes again and resign myself to my fate. I wonder I'm not dead," says Nolly, pathetically. "I never put in such a time in my life. Well, another quarter of an hour went by, and then I cautiously opened my eyes and looked again, and—would you believe it?"—indignantly,—"there they were still!",While the tiny, timid child,"I shall go," he says, doggedly, as though divining her secret wish.,“We can play the first canto, ‘The Chase,’ across the river in the Sunol Creek canyon,” Billy explained, eagerly.,When she made him this little trustful speech, however, he had felt some embarrassment, and had turned his attention upon a little muddy boy who was playing pitch-and-toss, irrespective of consequences, on the other side of the way.,"Thanks. I shall try to believe you, though your mirth is somewhat out of place, and has a tendency towards heartlessness." (He is laughing too.) "Yet there have been instances," goes on Mr. Rodney, still smiling, while watching her intently, "when maiden aunts have taken a fancy to third sons, and have died leaving them lots of tin.","Maurice! Maurice!" interrupted the girl, wildly. "Take me to the dead chamber.","Jacobs," he said, crisply, "I'll give you twenty-four hours in which to lose yourself. You can't stay here.",Anson, sitting slit-eyed and gleeful close beside him, received the slap with a force that knocked his face into his porridge bowl..