A Fluttered Dovecote. Fenn George Manville

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.

      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, and under it “firstly.” I allowed the whole of the first page for that head, put “secondly” at the beginning of the second page, and “thirdly” upon the next, which I meant to be the longest.

      Then I turned back, and wondered what I had better say, and whether either of the girls would do it for me if I offered her a shilling.

      “What shall I say next,” I asked myself, and then corrected my question; for it ought to have been, “What shall I say first?” And then I exclaimed under my breath, “A nasty, stupid, spiteful old thing, to set me this to do, on purpose to annoy me!” just as I looked on one side and found the girl next me was nearly at the bottom of her sheet of paper, while I could do nothing but tap my white teeth with my pen.

      I looked on the other side, where sat Miss Patty Smith, glaring horribly down at her blank paper, nibbling the end of her pen, and smelling dreadfully of peppermint; and her forehead was all wrinkled up, as if the big atlas were upon her head, and squeezing down the skin.

      Just then I caught Clara’s eye – for she was busy making a great deal of fuss with her blotting-paper, as if she had quite ended her task – when, upon seeing my miserable, hopeless look, she came round and sat down by me.

      “Never mind the essay,” she whispered; “say you had the headache. I dare say it will be correct, won’t it? For it always used to give me the headache when I first came.”

      “Oh, yes,” I said, with truth, “my head aches horribly.”

      “Of course it does, dear,” said Clara; “so leave that rubbish. It will be dancing in about five minutes.”

      “I say,” drawled Miss Smith to Clara, “what’s tendencies towards folly? I’m sure I don’t know.”

      “Patty Smith’s,” said Clara, in a sharp voice; and the great fat, stupid thing sat there, glaring at her with her big, round eyes, as much as to say, “What do you mean?”

      Sure enough, five minutes had not elapsed before we were summoned to our places in the room devoted to dancing and calisthenic exercises; and, as a matter of course, I was all in a flutter to see the French dancing master, who would be, I felt sure, a noble-looking refugee – a count in disguise – and I felt quite ready to let him make a favourable impression; for one cannot help sympathising with political exiles, since one has had a Louis Napoleon here in difficulties. But there, I declare it was too bad; and I looked across at Clara, who had slipped on first, and was holding her handkerchief to her mouth to keep from laughing as she watched my astonished looks; for you never did see such a droll little man, and I felt ready to cry with vexation at the whole place.

      There he stood – Monsieur de Kittville – the thinnest, funniest little man I ever saw off the stage. He seemed to have been made on purpose to take up as little room as possible in the world and he looked so droll and squeezy, one could not feel cross long in his presence. If I had not been in such terribly low spirits, I’m sure I must have laughed aloud at the funny, capering little fellow, as he skipped about, now here and now there – going through all the figures, and stopping every now and then to scrape through the tune upon his little fiddle.

      But it would have been a shame to laugh, for he was so good and patient; and I know he could feel how some of the girls made fun of him, though he bore it all amiably and never said a word.

      I know he must have thought me terribly stupid, for there was not one girl so awkward, and grumpy, and clumsy over the lesson. But think, although it was done kindly enough, what did I want with being pushed here, and poked there, and shouted at and called after in bad English, when I had been used to float round and round brilliantly-lighted rooms in dreamy waltzes and polkas, till day-break? And I declare the very thoughts of such scenes at a time like this were quite maddening.

      Finished! I felt as if I should be regularly finished long before the year had expired; and, after the short season of gaiety I had enjoyed in London, I would far rather have gone back to Guisnes and spent my days with dear old Soeur Charité in the convent. After all, I fancy papa was right when he said it was only a quiet advertising dodge – he will say such vulgar things, that he picks up in the City – and that it was not a genuine convent at all. I mean one of those places we used to read about, where they built the sisters up in walls, and all that sort of thing. But there: things