This to me! whose programme had been rushed at when I appeared at a dance, and not a vacant place left. Oh, dear! oh, dear! I feel the thrill of annoyance even now.

Of course I made my way out of the room to where Clara was waiting for me; and then we had a walk out in the grounds, with our arms round each other, just as if we had been friends for years; though you will agree it was only natural I should cling to the first lovable thing which presented itself to me in my then forlorn condition.

Chapter Three.

Memory the Third—Infelicity. Again a Child.

The next day was wet and miserable; and waiting about, and feeling strange and uncomfortable, as I did, made matters ever so much worse.

We were all in the schoolroom; and first one and then another stiff-backed, new-smelling book was pushed before me, and the odour of them made me feel quite wretched, it was so different to what of late I had been accustomed. For don’t, pray, think I dislike the smell of a new book—oh, no, not at all, I delight in it; but then it must be from Mudie’s, or Smith’s, or the Saint James’s Square place, while as for these new books—one was that nasty, stupid old Miss Mangnall’s “Questions,” and another was Fenwick de Porquet’s this, and another Fenwick de Porquet’s that, and, soon after, Noehden’s German Grammar, thrust before me with a grin by the Fraülein. At last, as if to drive me quite mad, as a very culmination of my miseries, I was set, with Clara Fitzacre and five more girls, to write an essay on “The tendencies towards folly of the present age.”

“What shall I say about it, ma’am?” I said to Miss Furness, who gave me the paper.

“Say?” she exclaimed, as if quite astonished at such a question. “Why, give your own opinions upon the subject.”

“Oh, shouldn’t I like to write an essay, and give my own opinions upon you,” I said to myself; while there I sat with the sheets of paper before me, biting and indenting the penholder, without the slightest idea how to begin.

I did think once of dividing the subject into three parts or heads, like Mr Saint Purre did his sermons; but there, nearly everybody I have heard in public does that, so it must be right. So I was almost determined to begin with a firstly, and then go on to a secondly, and then a thirdly; and when I felt quite determined, I wrote down the title, 

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