g my
father to excuse me, I said: "I can't do it." He was astounded, as well
he might be. I went on from bad to worse. I said: "I won't do it."

He stooped over me; he whispered: "I am going to ask you something;
I insist on your answering, Yes or No." He raised his voice, and drew
himself back so that they could all see me.

"Have you been taught like your sister?" he asked. "Has the catechism
that has been her religious lesson, for all her life, been your
religious lesson, for all your life, too?"

I said: "Yes"--and I was in such a rage that I said it out loud. If
Philip had handed me his cane, and had advised me to give the young
hussies who were answerable for this dreadful state of things a good
beating, I believe I should have done it. Papa turned his back on me and
offered the girls a last chance: "Do you feel sorry for what you have
done? Do you ask to be forgiven?"

Neither the one nor the other answered him. He called across the room to
the teachers: "Those two pupils are expelled the school."

Both the women looked horrified. The elder of the two approached him,
and tried to plead for a milder sentence. He answered in one stern
word: "Silence!"--and left the schoolroom, without even a passing bow to
Philip. And this, after he had cordially shaken hands with my poor dear,
not half an hour before.

I ought to have made affectionate allowance for his nervous miseries;
I ought to have run after him, and begged his pardon. There must be
something wrong, I am afraid, in girls loving anybody but their fathers.
When Helena led the way out by another door, I ran after Philip; and I
asked _him_ to forgive me.

I don't know what I said; it was all confusion. The fear of having
forfeited his fondness must, I suppose, have shaken my mind. I remember
entreating Helena to say a kind word for me. She was so clever, she
had behaved so well, she had deserved that Philip should listen to her.
"Oh," I cried out to him desperately, "what must you think of me?"

"I will tell you what I think of you," he said. "It is your father who
is in fault, Eunice--not you. Nothing could have been in worse taste
than his management of that trumpery affair in the schoolroom; it was
a complete mistake from beginning to end. Make your mind easy; I don't
blame You."

"Are you, really and truly, as fond of me as ever?"

"Yes, to be sure!"

Helena seemed to be hardly as much interested in this happy ending of my
anxieties as I might h