this, and Mrs. Gurley went on shaking
hers and smiling grimly. "Ah! the way gels are brought up nowadays,"
she said. "There was no such thing in my time. We were made to learn
what would be of some use and help to us afterwards."

Elderly Miss Chapman twiddled her chain. "I hope I did right Mrs.
Gurley. She had one week's early practice, but she looked so white all
day after it that I haven't put her down for it again. I hope I did
right?"

"Oh, well, we don't want to have them ill, you know," replied Mrs.
Gurley, in the rather irresponsive tone she adopted towards Miss
Chapman. "As long as it isn't mere laziness."

"I don't think she's lazy," said Miss Chapman. "At least she takes
great pains with her lessons at night."

This was true. Laura tried her utmost, with an industry born of
despair. For the comforting assurance of speedy promotion, which she
had given Mother, had no root in fact. These early weeks only served to
reduce, bit by bit, her belief in her own knowledge. How slender this
was, and of how little use to her in her new state, she did not dare to
confess even to herself. Her disillusionment had begun the day after
her arrival, when Dr Pughson, the Headmaster, to whom she had gone to
be examined in arithmetic, flung up hands of comical dismay at her
befogged attempts to solve the mysteries of long division. An upper
class was taking a lesson in Euclid, and in the intervals between her
mazy reckonings she had stolen glances at the master. A tiny little
nose was as if squashed flat on his face, above a grotesquely
expressive mouth, which displayed every one of a splendid set of teeth.
He had small, short-sighted, red-rimmed eyes, and curly hair which did
not stop growing at his ears, but went on curling, closely cropped,
down the sides of his face. He taught at the top of his voice, thumped
the blackboard with a pointer, was biting at the expense of a pupil who
confused the angle BFC with the angle BFG, a moment later to volley
forth a broad Irish joke which convulsed the class. He bewitched Laura;
she forgot her sums in the delight of watching him; and this made her
learning seem a little scantier than it actually was; for she had to
wind up in a great hurry. He pounced down upon her; the class laughed
anew at his playful horror; and yet again at the remark that it was
evident she had never had many pennies to spend, or she would know
better what to do with the figures that represented them.--In these