re to do it! Before Jerome Devonhough should place a
victor's crown on Clara Rutland's head, she would--well, what would
she do? "_Anything!_" muttered Mell, between her teeth.

Poor Mell! She had been to such an expensive school and learned so
many things, and not one of them was of the slightest use to her in
this sore strait. Could there not be established a new school for
girls, differing materially from the old; founded upon a more
adaptable basis, taught after a hitherto unknown method, and including
prominently in its curriculum of studies, that branch of knowledge
whose acquisition enables a woman to bear long, to suffer in silence,
and in weakness to be strong? These are the practical issues in a
woman's daily life, and although in such a school she might not get
her money's worth in German gutturals and French verbs, she would, at
least, have indulged in a less reckless expenditure of time in
obtaining useless knowledge.

But let us not blame the schools over much, and without a just
discrimination. Not all the fault lies at their door. Something there
is amiss among the girls themselves. It may be, that they love and
hate, and talk too much, even in one language.

In a girl of Mell's temperament, love would not have been love,
lacking jealousy, and its twin-feeling, revenge. More's the pity,
Mell!

That picnic dinner was splendid. Everybody enjoyed it but Mell, and it
was not the young fisherman's fault that she did not. Although he was
in attendance upon another young lady, who seemed to know what to say,
and said it incessantly, he kept an eye on Mell, and proffered her
every tempting dish he could lay his hands upon. To no purpose; for
Mell could not eat. She tried, and the very first mouthful paralyzed
her ability to swallow. It was altogether as much as she could do to
keep from sobbing aloud in the faces of all these omnivorous, happy
people. What made it all the worse, at breakfast time she had been
happier than they--too happy, in fact, to eat, and now, here at
dinner, she was too miserable.

And there sat the author of all her misery, not twelve feet distant,
perfectly oblivious to her proximity, nay, her very existence. Not by
any chance did he ever look toward her, or show any consciousness of
her presence. So devoted and so marked were his attentions to that
uninteresting and anything but attractive Clara Rutland, that Mell
heard it commented upon on all sides. These two, so sufficient unto