Matilda,
and I take her arm, and she tells me all about herself. She says she
knows she's very romantic. And she's got lots of secrets, and she's told
me several already; for she says she has a feeling that I can keep a
secret, and so I can. But telling you's not telling, you know, because
she's sure to tell you herself; only you'd better wait till she does
before you say anything, for fear she should be vexed."

Of course I promised to do so, and craned my neck out of bed to catch
Matilda's interesting but whispered revelations.

Matilda herself was only partially in Miss Perry's confidence, and I
looked anxiously forward to the time when she would admit me also to her
secrets, though I feared she might consider me too young. My fears were
groundless, as I found Miss Perry was fond of talking about herself, and
a suitable audience was quite a secondary consideration with her.

She was a _protegee_ of Mrs. Minchin's, who had persuaded Aunt Theresa
to take her for our governess. She was quite unfit for the position, and
did no little harm to us in her brief reign. But I do not think that our
interests had entered in the least into Mrs. Minchin's calculations in
the matter. She had "taken Miss Perry up," and to get Miss Perry a
comfortable home was her sole object.

To do our new governess justice, she did her best to impart her own
superficial acquirements to us. We plodded regularly through French
exercises, which she corrected by a key, and she kept us at work for a
given number of hours during the day; tatting by our sides as we
practised our scales, or roasting her petticoats over the fire, whilst
Matilda and I read Mrs. Markham's _England_ or Mrs. Trimmer's _Bible
Lessons_ aloud by turns to full-stops. But when lessons were over Miss
Perry was quite as glad as we were, and the subjects of our studies had
as little to do with our holiday hours as a Sunday sermon with the rest
of the week.

She was a great novel-reader, and I think a good many of the things she
told us of, as having happened to herself, had their real origin in the
Riflebury circulating library. For she was one of those strange
characters who indulge in egotism and exaggeration, till they seem
positively to lose the sense of what is fact and what is fiction.

She filled our poor empty little heads with a great deal of folly, and
it was well for us that her reign was not a long one.

She was much attached to the school-room fireside. She could n