cause there was nobody whom
it seemed to me I ever should know. I took my tea and bits of bread
and butter, feeling forlorn. A year in that place seemed to me longer
than I could bear. I had exchanged my King Log for King Stork.

It was some relief when after tea we were separated into other rooms
and sat down to study. But I dreamed over my book. I wondered how
heads could study that had so much trouble on the outside. I wandered
over the seas to that spot somewhere that was marked by the ship that
carried my father and mother. Only now going out towards China; and
how long months might pass before China would be done with and the
ship be bearing them back again. The lesson given me that night was
not difficult enough to bind my attention; and my heart grew very
heavy. So heavy, that I felt I _must_ find help somewhere. And when
one's need is so shut in, then it looks in the right quarter--the only
one left open.

My little book was upstairs in my bag: but my thoughts flew to my page
of that day and the "Fear thou not, for I am with thee." Nobody knows,
who has not wanted them, how good those words are. Nobody else can
understand how sweet they were to me. I lost for a little all sight of
the study table and the faces round it. I just remembered who was WITH ME;
in the freedom and joy of that presence both fears and loneliness seemed
to fade away. "I, the Lord, will hold thy right hand." Yes, and I, a weak
little child, put my hand in the hand of my great Leader, and felt safe
and strong.

I found very soon I had enemies to meet that I had not yet reckoned
with. The night passed peacefully enough; and the next day I was put
in the schoolroom and found my place in the various classes. The
schoolrooms were large and pleasant; large they had need to be, for
the number of day scholars who attended in them was very great. They
were many as well as spacious; different ages being parted off from
each other. Besides the schoolrooms proper, there were rooms for
recitation, where the classes met their teachers; so we had the change
and variety of moving from one part of the house to another. We met
Mlle. Genevieve in one room, for mathematics and Italian; Mme. Jupon
in another, for French. Miss Dumps seized us in another, for writing
and geography, and made the most of us; she was a severe little
person in her teaching and in her discipline; but she was good. We
called her Miss Maria, in general. Miss Babbitt had the history;