Martha Smith—red-faced and sleepy, and without a word to say for herself. As for Clara, I felt to love her in a moment, she was so tender and gentle, and talked in such a consolatory strain.

“I’m so glad to find that you are to be in our room,” said Clara, who was a tall, dark-haired, handsome girl. “We were afraid it would turn out to be some cross, frumpy, stuck-up body, weren’t we, Patty?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said the odious thing, whose words all sounded fat and sticky. “I thought you said that you wouldn’t have anybody else in our room. I wish it was tea-time.”

“But I should not have said so if I had known who was coming,” said Clara, turning very red. “But Patty has her wish, for it is tea-time; so sponge your poor eyes, and let me do your hair, and then we’ll go down. You need not wait, Patty.”

Patty Smith did not seem as if she wished to wait, for she gave a great, coarse yawn, for all the world like a butcher’s daughter, and then went out of the room.

“She is so fat and stupid,” said Clara, “that it has been quite miserable here; and I’m so glad that you’ve come, dear.”

“I’m not,” said I, dismally. “I don’t like beginning school over again.”

“But then we don’t call this school,” said Clara.

“But it is, all the same,” I said. “Oh, no,” said Clara, kindly; “we only consider that we are finishing our studies here, and there are such nice teachers.”

“How can you say so!” I exclaimed indignantly. “I never saw such a set of ugly, old, cross-looking—”

“Ah, but you’ve only seen the lady teachers yet. You have not seen Monsieur Achille de Tiraille, and Signor Pazzoletto—such fine, handsome, gentlemanly men; and then there’s that dear, good-tempered, funny little Monsieur de Kittville.”

I could not help sighing as I thought of Mr Saint Purre, and his long, black, silky beard; and how nice it would have been to have knelt down and confessed all my troubles to him, and I’m sure I should have kept nothing back.

“All the young ladies are deeply in love with them,” continued Clara, as she finished my hair; “so pray don’t lose your heart, and make any one jealous.”

“There is no fear for me,” I said, with a deep sigh; and then, somehow or another, I began 

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