was a wretched,
neglected, miserable castaway.

'I hate everybody,' said Miss Squeers, 'and I wish that everybody was
dead--that I do.'

'Dear, dear,' said Miss Price, quite moved by this avowal of
misanthropical sentiments. 'You are not serious, I am sure.'

'Yes, I am,' rejoined Miss Squeers, tying tight knots in her
pocket-handkerchief and clenching her teeth. 'And I wish I was dead too.
There!'

'Oh! you'll think very differently in another five minutes,' said
Matilda. 'How much better to take him into favour again, than to hurt
yourself by going on in that way. Wouldn't it be much nicer, now,
to have him all to yourself on good terms, in a company-keeping,
love-making, pleasant sort of manner?'

'I don't know but what it would,' sobbed Miss Squeers. 'Oh! 'Tilda, how
could you have acted so mean and dishonourable! I wouldn't have believed
it of you, if anybody had told me.'

'Heyday!' exclaimed Miss Price, giggling. 'One would suppose I had been
murdering somebody at least.'

'Very nigh as bad,' said Miss Squeers passionately.

'And all this because I happen to have enough of good looks to make
people civil to me,' cried Miss Price. 'Persons don't make their own
faces, and it's no more my fault if mine is a good one than it is other
people's fault if theirs is a bad one.'

'Hold your tongue,' shrieked Miss Squeers, in her shrillest tone; 'or
you'll make me slap you, 'Tilda, and afterwards I should be sorry for
it!'

It is needless to say, that, by this time, the temper of each young lady
was in some slight degree affected by the tone of her conversation,
and that a dash of personality was infused into the altercation, in
consequence. Indeed, the quarrel, from slight beginnings, rose to a
considerable height, and was assuming a very violent complexion,
when both parties, falling into a great passion of tears, exclaimed
simultaneously, that they had never thought of being spoken to in that
way: which exclamation, leading to a remonstrance, gradually brought
on an explanation: and the upshot was, that they fell into each other's
arms and vowed eternal friendship; the occasion in question making the
fifty-second time of repeating the same impressive ceremony within a
twelvemonth.

Perfect amicability being thus restored, a dialogue naturally ensued
upon the number and nature of the garments which would be indispensable
for Miss Price's entrance into the holy state of matrimony, when Miss
Squeers clearly