she must be very rich, indeed, to compensate for her diluting
presence. Miss Thompson had accepted her on the strength of President
West's personal letter, and it did not take her long to discover that
she had made a grave mistake. Adelle was all water!

She folded up her napkin at dinner in the thrifty manner of the Church
Street house. She ate her soup from the point of her spoon, and the
wrong spoon, and she wore her one dress from the time she got up in the
morning until she went to bed. If it had not been for the solid social
position of President West and the prestige of the trust company, whose
ward she was, it is probable that Adelle would have been sent packing by
the end of the second day. As it was, the head mistress said to Miss
Stevens, with a sigh of commendable Christian resignation,--"We must do
our best for the poor little thing--send her in to me after dinner."

When Adelle entered the private sitting-room of the head mistress, she
expected to be given directions about her classes. Not at all. Miss
Thomson, who still seemed to be suffering from the indisposition that
Adelle found frequently attacked her, looked her over coldly as she
sipped her coffee and remarked that she "must have something fit to wear
at once." She put the little girl through a careful examination as to
the contents of her trunk, with the result that in a few days Adelle's
wardrobe was marvelously increased with a supply of suitable frocks for
all occasions, slippers, lingerie, and hats, and the bill was sent to
the trust company, which honored it promptly without question, not
knowing exactly what a girl ought to cost. Having equipped her pupil
"decently," Miss Thompson observed "that she didn't have an idea how to
wear her clothes," but she trusted to the spirit of the school to
correct that deficiency. Next she sent Adelle to the dentist and had her
teeth straightened,--a painful operation that dragged through several
years at great cost of time and money, and resulted finally in a set of
regular teeth that looked much like false ones. Having provided for her
outside, the teachers turned their attention to her manners and "form,"
and here lay Adelle's worst mental torture. That young teacher, "Rosy"
Stevens, who had fetched her from B----, had this task. "Rosy," who was
only thirty, was supposed to be having "a desperate affair of the heart"
with an actor, which she discussed with the older girls. She was the
most popular chape