ation as she
stumbled through her truly English-French. Mdlle. Perier, who was a very
fiery little woman, almost screamed at her--the girls colored and nearly
tittered. Hester hoped to recover her lost laurels in German, but by this
time her head ached and she did very little better in the German which
she loved than in the French which she detested. At twelve o'clock she
was relieved to find that school was over for the present, and she heard
the English teacher's voice desiring the girls to go quickly to their
rooms, and to assemble in five minutes' time in the great stone hall,
equipped for their walk.

The walk lasted for a little over an hour, and was a very dreary penance
to poor Hester, as she was neither allowed to run, race, nor talk a word
of English. She sighed heavily once or twice, and several of the girls
who looked at her curiously agreed with Annie Forest that she was
decidedly sulky. The walk was followed by dinner; then came half an hour
of recreation in the delightful play-room, and eager chattering in the
English tongue.

At three o'clock the school assembled once more; but now the studies were
of a less severe character, and Hester spent one of her first happy
half-hours over a drawing lesson. She had a great love for drawing, and
felt some pride in the really beautiful copy which she was making of the
stump of an old gnarled oak-tree. Her dismay, however, was proportionately
great when the drawing-master drew his pencil right across her copy.

"I particularly requested you not to sketch in any of the shadows, Miss
Thornton. Did you not hear me say that my lesson to-day was in outline? I
gave you a shaded piece to copy in outline--did you not understand?"

"This is my first day at school," whispered back poor Hester, speaking in
English in her distress. Whereupon the master smiled, and even forgot to
report her for her transgression of the French tongue.

Hester spent the rest of that afternoon over her music lesson. The
music-master was an irascible little German, but Hester played with some
taste, and was therefore not too severely rapped over the knuckles.

Then came tea and another half-hour of recreation, which was followed by
two silent hours in the school-room, each girl bent busily over her books
in preparation for the next day's work. Hester studied hard, for she had
made up her mind to be the intellectual prodigy of the school. Even on
this first day, miserable as it was, she had won