the Cedars, the money should be well earned.

And now, once for all, let me say that I offer no excuse for my behaviour; while I freely confess to have been, all through my stay at the Cedars, very wicked, and shocking, and reprehensible.

“I think your mamma has come to a most sensible determination, Miss Bozerne,” said Mrs Blunt, after half an hour’s examination. “What do you think, ladies?”

“Oh, quite so,” chorused the teachers.

“Really,” said Mrs Blunt, “I cannot recall having had a young lady of your years so extremely backward.”

Then she sat as if expecting that I should speak, for she played with her eyeglass, and occasionally took a glance at me; but I would not have said a word, no, not even if they had pinched me.

“But I think we can raise the standard of your acquirements, Miss Bozerne. What do you say, ladies?”

“Oh, quite so,” chorused the satellites, as if they had said it hundreds of times before; and I feel sure that they had.

“And now,” said Mrs Blunt, “we will close this rather unsatisfactory preliminary examination. Miss Bozerne, you may retire.”

I was nearly at the door—glad to have it over, and to be able to be once more with my thoughts—when the old creature called me back.

“Not in that way, Miss Bozerne,” she exclaimed, with a dignified, cold, contemptuous air, which made me want to slap her—“not in that way at the Cedars, Miss Bozerne. Perhaps, Miss Sloman, as the master of deportment is not here, you will show Miss Laura Bozerne the manner in which to leave a room.—Your education has been sadly neglected, my child.”

This last she said to me with rather an air of pity, just as if I was only nine or ten years old; and, as a matter of course, being rather proud of my attainments, I felt dreadfully annoyed.

But my attention was now taken up by Miss Sloman, a dreadfully skinny old thing, in moustachios, who had risen from her seat, and began backing towards the door in an awkward way, like two clothes-props in a sheet, till she contrived to catch against a little gipsy work-table and overset it, when, cross as I felt, I could not refrain from laughing.

“Leave the room, Miss Bozerne,” exclaimed Mrs Blunt, haughtily.

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