"Admirable proportion of ages," said the Doctor. "Try it."

Simonet obeyed. He went to Paris for six months, and wept among his compatriots. There was no perceptible increase of the waters of Seine. There was, however, in the consumption of absinthe. Simonet returned

from the city of lust and laughter quite ready to follow the Doctor's advice. He asked Selina Woodman to marry him; she accepted, perchance out of gratitude, and Madame Simonet's school became more famous than

ever.

Now the second Madame Simonet was only a "young person" whom the first Madame Simonet had taken in. She was an orphan : her father had been killed at Matravers's fac

tory by an accident. She was about eight. Madame thought she might be brought up to attend to the young ladies' linen; but she

showed unusual cleverness, and became in time. an inmate of the school. Thence she passed to the position of governess.

Return we to Amy Chatterton's sensation. A new parlour boarder had arrived at the Silchester Seminary-a Miss Laura Bronté. She was one of those ugly girls that fools think pretty. Madame Simonet objected to the parlour boarder system; but the uncle of this young lady, a venerable white-haired gentleman who came from India, conquered her prejudices by eloquently assuring her that his niece was not in health, and that he would pay any price she liked.

So Miss Laura brought her long dark eyebrows and eyelashes, and her sly half-communicative eyes, and her rather tawdry jewelry and finery, to Silchester Seminary. The bargain had been made in old Simonet's absence, and he was decidedly disgusted. He did not

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17

like the young person's look. However, he usually let his wife have her way, so long as she did not interfere with his horticultural arrangements. So he merely indulged in a few slight French objurgations, and then went away to see if there' was any sign of red spider among his melons.

Laura Bronté was only to learn accomplishments, and those only when she chose. She was to be quite free from restriction. She was to go in and out as she liked. She was to pay two hundred a year. That sum, double the usual amount, tempted Madame Simonet, and settled the question.

O for

Hence there was gossip in the dormitories, and much criticism of the new arrival. the easy pencil of young Maclise to sketch some twenty or thirty little girls, in airy costume, in various attitudes upon their bedsteads, while Amy the oratress chattered! Chattered! Why the cataract of Lodore was nothing to it! How she analysed that unlucky parlour

boarder! How she criticised the eyes and the eyebrows, the shape and the manner!

"She eats tea-leaves and slate pencil, I'm sure," said Amy. "She couldn't get such a lovely complexion without it. It's just a mixture of the brown of bohea with the green-blue of slate. I think it charming, but I am of course open to contradiction."

"What a nuisance you are, Amy," exclaimed Grace Greenland, the Dudu of the dormitory. "You chatter like a magpie, and nobody can sleep. I declare I'll sew you up in a bolstercase and hang you out of window, if you are not quiet."

As Grace was as strong as Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, Amy Chatterton subsided. There was silence and there was sleep.

END OF VOL. I.