rebuke her tardiness. "Miss Smith
will purse up her lips, and utter some cutting sarcasm of course, but I
don't care," and Winnie, kicking off her boots, pitched them--well, I
don't think she herself knew where. The jacket being next unfastened,
she proceeded to divest herself of her hat, and pulled with such
violence that the elastic snapped and struck her face severely.
Winnie's temper (so Dick declared) resembled nothing so much as a
pop-gun, going off, as it were, with a great bang on the least
provocation. Flinging the offending article to the other side of the
room, and addressing it in anything but complimentary terms, she picked
up her books, shook her shaggy mane over her face, and marched straight
to the large class-room, where the girls were already busy over their
Bible lesson.

"Half-an-hour late, Miss Blake. You really are improving. Allow me to
remind you of the fine, also of Mrs. Elder's instructions to take the
lowest seat;" and Miss Smith, the senior governess, uttered the words
with withering scorn.

"Good-morning," replied the culprit, hiding an angry little heart under
a smiling exterior, and slipping her penny into the box on the
teacher's desk; "my sleep was slightly broken last night, and that made
me late."

Here the girls tittered, and Miss Smith frowned. "Indeed," she
commented haughtily; "pray, does your constitution require a stated
interval of so many hours for sleep _every_ night?" and the governess
laid special stress on the word "every."

"Well, perhaps not," replied Winnie, coolly sitting down and proceeding
to unfasten her books; "but I always indulge in an extra half hour if I
am disturbed in my slumbers. Broken rest tells sorely on my nervous
system, and renders both myself and others miserable."

At this point some of the pupils laughed outright, and Miss Smith's
anger rose.

"Silence!" she said, rising and tapping rapidly on the desk. "Miss
Blake, you are a disgrace to the school. Attend to your lesson, and
let me hear no more rude, impertinent language, or I shall punish you
severely," and the governess treated Winnie to one glance of supreme
contempt as she spoke.

The child ground her little white teeth together as she gazed on the
teacher's sour-faced visage and listened to the tones of her
high-pitched voice. "Regular crab-apple, and as cross as two sticks,"
she muttered, knitting her brow in an angry frown, but smoothing it
hastily and calling up the neces