omed
to sit down to at Ion and Viamede.

She ate but little; in fact, homesickness had nearly destroyed her
appetite.

"What a miserable supper!" she remarked to a school-mate, when they had
gone from the dining-room and were gathered on the veranda for the short
half-hour that intervened between the meal and the evening study-hour.

"It was quite as good as usual," was the rejoinder in a sneering tone.
"What did you expect? Do you suppose the Mantons don't want to make
anything off us as boarders?"

"I hadn't thought about that at all," Lulu said, with a look of surprise
and perplexity. Then after a moment's cogitation, "I suppose they do want
to make all they can out of us, and that would be the reason there was so
little on the table; but would it have cost any more to have it cooked
properly? The bread was both sour and heavy, and the butter so strong
that I'd rather go without than eat it."

"Rancid butter is cheaper than sweet, both as costing less and going
farther," answered her companion, "and good cooks are apt to be able to
command higher wages than poor ones; also, like butter, bread goes
farther if it is unpalatable."

"But it makes people sick?" Lulu said, half in assertion, half in
inquiry.

"Of course; but the Mantons don't pay our doctor bills, or support us in
invalidism if it comes to that."

The girl walked away, and Lulu stood leaning against a pillar, lost in
thought, and feeling more homesick than ever.

The boarding-scholars were all some years older than herself, and did not
seem to desire her companionship; in fact, they looked upon and treated
her as one in disgrace, shunned her society, and almost ignored her
existence.

The study-hour over, they gathered in groups, chatting together on such
themes as school-girls find most interesting, one or another now and then
looking askance at Lulu, who sat at a distance, lonely and forlorn,
watching them and half-envying their apparent gayety and
lightheartedness.

How she longed for Evelyn, Grace, Max; even Rosie and the grown up-people
at Viamede!

It was a long evening to her; she thought the hands of the clock had
never before moved so slowly.

At nine a bell called them all into Professor Manton's school-room, where
he read a chapter from the Bible, and made a long prayer in a dull,
monotonous tone, that set most of his hearers to nodding or indulging in
half-suppressed gapes and yawns.

It struck Lulu as a very different servi