d vicar.

"This is my new pupil, Mr. Everard, or rather I should say, our new
pupil. Her education depends as much on you as on me."

The vicar held out his hands, and took Hester's within them, and then
drew her forward to the light.

"This little face does not seem quite strange to me," he said. "Have I
ever seen you before, my dear?"

"No, sir," replied Hester.

"You have seen her mother," said Mrs. Willis--"Do you remember your
favorite pupil, Helen Anstey, of long ago?"

"Ah! indeed--indeed! I shall never forget Helen. And are you her child,
little one?"

But Hester's face had grown white. The solemn service in the chapel,
joined to all the excitement and anxieties of the day, had strung up her
sensitive nerves to a pitch higher than she could endure. Suddenly, as
the vicar spoke to her, and Mrs. Willis looked kindly down at her new
pupil, the chapel seemed to reel round, the pupils one by one
disappeared, and the tired girl only saved herself from fainting by a
sudden burst of tears.

"Oh, I am unhappy," she sobbed, "without my mother! Please, please, don't
talk to me about my mother."

She could scarcely take in the gentle words which her two friends said to
her, and she hardly noticed when Mrs. Willis did such a wonderful thing
as to stoop down and kiss a second time the lips of a new pupil.

Finally she found herself consigned to Miss Danesbury's care, who hurried
her off to her room, and helped her to undress and tucked her into her
little bed.

"Now, love, you shall have some hot gruel. No, not a word. You ate little
or no tea to-night--I watched you from my distant table. Half your
loneliness is caused by want of food--I know it, my love; I am a very
practical person. Now, eat your gruel, and then shut your eyes and go to
sleep."

"You are very kind to me," said Hester, "and so is Mrs. Willis, and so is
Mr. Everard, and I like Cecil Temple--but, oh, I wish Annie Forest was
not in the school!"

"Hush, my dear, I implore of you. You pain me by these words. I am quite
confident that Annie will be your best friend yet."

Hester's lips said nothing, but her eyes answered "Never" as plainly as
eyes could speak.

CHAPTER VII.

A DAY AT SCHOOL.

If Hester Thornton went to sleep that night under a sort of dreamy, hazy
impression that school was a place without a great deal of order, with
many kind and sympathizing faces, and with some not so agreeable; if she
went to sleep under the im