is it?"

"No, not in the room, Heart's-Ease, but right here," laying his hand upon
his heart.

The child regarded him questioningly with her big, earnest eyes, and
said:

"Did it grow cold because mamma went so sound asleep?"

"I'm afraid so; but now let us talk about something else: I've some news
for you, but do not know how you will like it; sit still while I tell it
to you," and he began to unfold his plan regarding the school.

CHAPTER II

"A TOUCH CAN MAKE OR A TOUCH CAN MAR"

The school was chosen and Toinette placed therein. What momentous results
often follow a simple act. When Clayton Reeve placed his little girl with
the Misses Carter, intending to leave her there a few months, and seek the
change of scene so essential to his health, he did not realize that her
whole future would be more or less influenced by the period she was
destined to spend there. No brighter, sunnier, happier disposition could
have been met with than Toinette's when she entered the school; none more
restless, distrustful and dissatisfied than her's when she left it, nearly
six years later.

If we are held accountable for sins of omission, as well as sins of
commission, certainly the Misses Carter had a long account to meet.

Like many others who had chosen that vocation, they were utterly incapable
of filling it either to their own credit or the advantage of those they
taught. While perfectly capable of imparting the knowledge they had
obtained from books, and of making any number of rules to be followed as
those of the "Medes and Persians," they did not, in the very remotest
degree, possess the insight into character, the sympathy with their pupils
so essential in true teachers.

It is not alone to learn that which is contained between the covers of a
book that our girls are sent to school or college, but also to gather in
the thousand and one things untaught by either books or words. These must
be absorbed as the flowers absorb the sunshine and dew, growing lovelier,
sweeter and more attractive each day and never suspecting it.

And so the shaping of Toinette's character, so beautifully begun by the
wise, gentle mother, passed into other and less sensitive hands. It was
like a delicate bit of pottery, the pride of the potter's heart, upon
which he had spent uncountable hours, and was fashioning so skilfully,
almost fearing to touch it lest he mar instead of add to its beauty;
dreading to let others approach lest,