nsparent
bodices.

CHAPTER XVI.

ELEANOR'S REPUTATION--THE MAD GENTLEMAN--FANCIES AND FOLLIES--MATILDA'S
HEALTH--THE NEW DOCTOR.

We were not jealous of Eleanor's popularity. She was popular with the
girls as well as with the teachers. If she was apt to be opinionated,
she was candid, generous, and modest. She was always willing to help any
one, and (the firmest seal of friendship!) she was utterly sincere.

She worked harder than any of us, so it was but just that she should be
most commended. But of all who lagged behind her, and who felt Madame's
severity, and created despair in the mind of the little
arithmetic-master, the most unlucky was poor Matilda.

Matilda and I were now on the best of terms, and the credit of this
happy condition of matters is more hers than mine.

It was not so much that I had learned more tact and sympathy (though I
hope these qualities do ripen with years and better knowledge!) as
because Matilda did most faithfully try to fulfil the good resolutions
Major Buller's kindness had led her to make.

So far as Matilda's ailments were mental, I think that school-life may
have been of some benefit.

Since the torments which have taught me caution in a household haunted
by boys, I am less confidential with my diary than I used to be. And if
I do not confide all my own follies to it, I am certainly not justified
in recording other people's.

Not that Matilda makes any secret of the hero-worship she wasted on the
man with the chiselled face and weird eyes, whom we used to see on the
Riflebury Esplanade. She never spoke to him; but neither for that matter
did his dog, a Scotch deerhound with eyes very like his master's, and a
long nose which (uncomfortable as the position must have been) he kept
always resting in his master's hand as the two paced up and down, hour
after hour, by the sea.

What folly Miss Perry talked on the subject it boots not at this date to
record. _I_ never indulged a more fanciful feeling towards him than
wonder, just dashed with a little fear--but I would myself have liked to
know the meaning of that long gaze he and the dog sometimes turned on
us!

We shall never know now, however, for the poor gentleman died in a
lunatic asylum.

I hope, when they shut him up, that they found the deerhound guilty also
of some unhydrophobiac madness, and imprisoned the two friends
together!

Of course we laugh now about Matilda's fancy for the insane gentleman,
thou