ch carries any learner upward, as if on wings, over the heads
of the mechanical plodders and the indifferent routinists. She learned,
therefore, in a way to surprise the experienced instructors. Her
somewhat rude sketching soon began to show something of the artist's
touch. Her voice, which had only been taught to warble the simplest
melodies, after a little training began to show its force and sweetness
and flexibility in the airs that enchant drawing-room audiences. She
caught with great readiness the manner of the easiest girls,
unconsciously, for she inherited old social instincts which became
nature with the briefest exercise. Not much license of dress was allowed
in the educational establishment of Madam Delacoste, but every girl had
an opportunity to show her taste within the conventional limits
prescribed. And Myrtle soon began to challenge remark by a certain air
she contrived to give her dresses, and the skill with which she blended
their colors.

"Tell you what, girls," said Miss Berengaria Topping, female
representative of the great dynasty that ruled over the world-famous
Planet Hotel, "she's got style, lots of it. I call her perfectly
splendid, when she's got up in her swell clothes. That oriole's wing she
wears in her bonnet makes her look gorgeous,--she'll be a stunning
Pocahontas for the next _tableau_."

Miss Rose Bugbee, whose family opulence grew out of the only
merchantable article a Hebrew is never known to seek profit from,
thought she could be made presentable in the first circles if taken in
hand in good season. So it came about that, before many weeks had passed
over her as a scholar in the great educational establishment, she might
be considered as on the whole the most popular girl in the whole bevy of
them. The studious ones admired her for her facility of learning, and
her extraordinary appetite for every form of instruction, and the showy
girls, who were only enduring school as the purgatory that opened into
the celestial world of society, recognized in her a very handsome young
person, who would be like to make a sensation sooner or later.

There were, however, it must be confessed, a few who considered
themselves the thickest of the cream of the school-girls, who submitted
her to a more trying ordeal than any she had yet passed.

"How many horses does your papa keep?" asked Miss Florence Smythe. "We
keep nine and a pony for Edgar."

Myrtle had to explain that she had no papa, and th