. Surely
you have finished by now!"

The children thought they had hardly begun; but perhaps it was just as
well to be spared the last trying moments. Bridgie and Esmeralda
wrapped their arms round the little sister and almost carried her to the
door; Pat and Miles followed with their hands in their pockets, putting
on a great affectation of jollity in their anxiety to disguise a natural
regret; the two women-servants wailed loudly from the staircase. Pixie
scrambled to her seat and looked down at them, her poor little chin
quivering with emotion.

"Bridgie, write! Esmeralda, write!" she cried brokenly. "Oh, write
often! Write every day. Pat, Pat, be kind to my ferret. Don't starve
it. Don't let it die. Take care of it for me till I come back."

"I'll be a mother to it," said Pat solemnly.

And so Pixie O'Shaughnessy went off to school.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE NEW SCHOLAR.

Major O'Shaughnessy and his little daughter reached London on the
following afternoon, after a comfortable and unadventurous journey.
Pixie had howled dismally all the way to the station, but had dried her
eyes at the sight of the train, and even brightened into hilarious
spirits on boarding the steamer. She ate an enormous dinner of the
richest and most indigestible dishes on the menu, slept peacefully
through a stormy passage, and was up on deck conversing affably with the
men who were washing down, long before her father had nerved himself to
think of dressing. The journey to London was a more or less
disappointing experience, for, if she had not known to the contrary, she
was not at all sure that she would have recognised that she was in a
strange land. What she had expected, it was impossible to say; but that
England should bear so close a resemblance to her beloved land seemed
another "insult to Ireland," as Pat would have had it, and that it
should in some respects look better, more prosperous and orderly, this
was indeed a bitter pill to swallow.

As the train neared London, and other passengers came in and out of the
carriage, Major O'Shaughnessy became conscious for the first time what a
dusty, dishevelled little mortal he was about to introduce to an English
school. He was not noticing where his children were concerned, and
moreover, his eye had grown accustomed to the home surroundings, but the
contrast between these trim strangers and his own daughter was too
striking to be overlooked. Pixie had wriggled about u