The Getting of Wisdom

flitted like a grey wraith from room to room and from one gas-jet to another, among stretched, sleeping forms. And the few minutes' grace at an end, it was a cold, unwilling pack that t

ianos was rightly occupied; and, as winter crept on, its chief outward sign an occasional thin white spread of frost which

ut, on the same plan: cut in one piece, buttoning right down the front, they fitted her like an eelskin, rigidly outlining her majestic proportions, and always short enough to show a pair of surprisingly small, well-shod feet. Thus she stood, sipping her water, and boring with her hard, unflagging eye every girl that presented herself to it. Most shrank noiselessly away as soon as breakfast was over; for, unless one was very firm indeed in the conviction of one's own innocence, to be beneath this eye was apt to induce a disagreeable sense of guilt. In the case of Mrs. Gurley, familiarity ha

rimands. For this, the undue familiarity of her manner was to blame: she was all too slow to grasp-being of an impulsive disposition and not naturally shy-that it was indecorous to accost Mrs. Gurley off-hand, to treat her, indeed, in any way as if she were an ordi

ly took half this verb today? It's COUDRE, and means to sew, you kno

face, which had been smiling, froze to stone. She looked at her arm as though the hand had bitten

"The first thing, miss, for you to do, will be, to take a course of lessons, in manners. Your present ones, may have done w

ing to wash them white. Since that day, she had never of her own free will approached Mrs. Gurley again, and even avoided those places where she was likely to be found. This was why one morning, some three weeks later, on discovering that she had forgotten one of her lesson-books, she hesitated long before re-entering the dining-hall. The governesses still clustered round their chief

spied her and dema

they weren't screwed on," retorted the governess, in th

s, Laura picked out her boo

of the group had

re for some time," pronounced Miss Day,

ed," agreed M

he former: "but it must be the end of creation. She's utterly no idea of

rass. "She doesn't know the simplest things, and her spelling is awful. And yet, do you know, at history the other day

y," said Miss Zielinski

grimly. "Ah! the way gels are brought up nowadays," she said. "There was no such thing

ey. She had one week's early practice, but she looked so white all day

ed Mrs. Gurley, in the rather irresponsive tone she adopted

ss Chapman. "At least she takes gre

division. An upper class was taking a lesson in Euclid, and in the intervals between her mazy reckonings she had stolen glances at the master. A tiny little nose was as if squashed flat on his face, above a grotesquely expressive mouth, which displayed every one of a splendid set of teeth. He had small, short-sighted, red-rimmed eyes, and curly hair which did not stop growing at his ears, but went on curling, closely cropped, down the sides of his face. He taught at the top of his voice, thumped the blackboard with a pointer, was biting at the expense of a pupil who confused the angle BFC with t

caused even Miss Zielinski to sit back in her chair and laugh till the tears ran down her face. History Laura knew in a vague, pictorial way: she and Pin had enacted many a striking scene in the garden-such as "Not Angles but Angels," or, did the pump-drain overflow, Canute and his silly courtiers-and she also had out-of-the-way scraps of information about the characters of some of the monarchs, or, as the governess had complained, about the state of London at a certain period; but she had never troubled her head with dates. Now they rose before her,

here?" cried Miss Snodgrass. "Carrie Isaa

ss Snodgrass. She's so fu

you doin

nswer. The girl

hee!-she said

blue?" snapped

t was so beautiful ...

I said," murmured La

sometimes after this, when a particularly long or odd word occurred in the lesson, she would turn to Lau

ol's colours"; and Lau

ismay that she had lost her pencil. To confess the loss meant one of the hard, public rebukes from which she shrank. And so, wh

ack-haired boarder who had winked at Laura the first evening at tea; her

ost my

the lid from a box of long, beautifully sharpened

estly selected the shortest pencil. Bertha Ramsay,

tea-table, hold on to your eyebrows and sing Rule

irl called Inez, chimed

said to Bertha, in a deep, slow

pencil. So she drew a sigh, and said, with over-emphasis

g way: "Yes, isn't it?" But Inez leaned

" she tel

rness's cry. "Here you, the new girl, Lau

rom hear-say, just how England looked; that she could see, in fancy, its ever-green grass, thick hedges, and spreading trees; its never-dry rivers; its hoary old cathedrals; its fogs, and sea-mists, and over-populous cities. She stood fac

the verandah at the end of the h

said that about her mothe

the thought that she had again, withou

ertha was not within hearing, t

dri

t; she had hitherto associated it only with the lowest class of Irish agricultural labourer, or with those dreadful white women w

help giggling at the effect produced by her words-the new girl was a 'rum s

ain if that's it. But there's so

her breathless listener, ma

talked to herself, not to us. She tried to eat mustard with her pudding too, and her meat w

ll Laura co

d my mother said I

't ask me. What sha

Bertha's awfully ashamed of it," said Inez, a

ertha, and dealt out a couple of her rough and friend

ers. Laura won; for Inez's wind gave out half way, and Bertha was heavy of foot. Leaning against the palings Laura watched the