secakes and tarts of an
evening.

_Henrietta._ O, do not mistake! We might have gone without them all our
lives, before Madame Disette would have sent us any thing of the sort.
She did not even allow us apples of an evening, or a piece of bread
between breakfast and dinner. Why, one summer evening, she bought at the
door some common ice-cream, of a black man that was carrying it through
the streets in a tin pot; and when we thought that, _for once_, she had
certainly treated us, she charged the ice-cream in our quarter-bills.
No, no,--we got nothing from _her_, but stale bread; bad butter; sloppy
tea; coffee without taste or colour; skinny meat, half-cooked one day,
cold the next, and hashed or rather coddled the third. Then, for a
dessert, we were regaled with sour knotty apples in the winter,
worm-eaten cherries in the summer, and dry squashy pears in the autumn;
and once a week we had boiled rice, or baked bread and milk, by way of
pudding. Though after the scholars had eaten their allowance, and made
their curtsies and gone up to the school-room, she always had something
nice brought for herself, and her sister, and niece: and of which poor
Benson, the under teacher, was never invited to partake.

_Miss Wilcox._ But how did you get such nice things in the evening?

_Henrietta._ We bought them, to be sure: bought them with our own money.
That was the only way. When the little girls had all gone to bed, and
Madame Disette, and Madame Trompeur, and Mademoiselle Mensonge were
engaged in the parlour with their company, we all (that is, the first
class) subscribed something; and we commissioned the chambermaid to
bring us whatever we wanted from the confectioner's. O, what delightful
feasts we had!

_Miss Thomson._ Did Madame Disette never find you out?

_Henrietta._ O, no!--we laid our plans too cunningly. And Benson, the
teacher, was a good creature, and always joined our party; so we knew
she would not tell.

_Miss Scott._ I am sure we never could prevail on our teacher, Miss
Loxley, to be concerned in such things. _She_ would think it so very
improper.

_Henrietta._ Well, we must take an opportunity when Miss Loxley is not
at home. Mrs. Middleton permits her to go out whenever she requests it.
She does not keep her so closely confined as Madame Disette did poor
Benson.

_Miss Scott._ Mrs. Middleton has so much reliance on her elder pupils,
that she is not afraid to trust us sometimes without Miss Loxley. And