ers of evasiveness
and dissimulation--there might be a small bonfire, with a cracker or two
if the public funds could bear the unwonted strain.

I was awakened by Harold digging me in the ribs, and 'She's going
to-day!' was the morning hymn that scattered the clouds of sleep.
Strange to say, it was with no corresponding jubilation of spirits that
I slowly realised the momentous fact. Indeed, as I dressed, a dull
disagreeable feeling that I could not define grew up in me--something
like a physical bruise. Harold was evidently feeling it too, for after
repeating 'She's going to-day!' in a tone more befitting the Litany, he
looked hard in my face for direction as to how the situation was to be
taken. But I crossly bade him look sharp and say his prayers and not
bother me. What could this gloom portend, that on a day of days like the
present seemed to hang my heavens with black?

Down at last and out in the sun, we found Edward before us, swinging on
a gate and chanting a farm-yard ditty in which all the beasts appear in
due order, jargoning in their several tongues, and every verse begins
with the couplet:

'Now, my lads, come with me,
Out in the morning early!'

The fateful exodus of the day had evidently slipped his memory entirely.
I touched him on the shoulder. 'She's going to-day!' I said. Edward's
carol subsided like a water-tap turned off. 'So she is!' he replied, and
got down at once off the gate. And we returned to the house without
another word.

[Illustration: '_At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a most mean and
uncalled-for manner_']

At breakfast Miss Smedley behaved in a most mean and uncalled-for
manner. The right divine of governesses to govern wrong includes no
right to cry. In thus usurping the prerogative of their victims they
ignore the rules of the ring, and hit below the belt. Charlotte was
crying, of course; but that counted for nothing. Charlotte even cried
when the pigs' noses were ringed in due season; thereby evoking the
cheery contempt of the operators, who asserted they liked it, and
doubtless knew. But when the cloud-compeller, her bolts laid aside,
resorted to tears, mutinous humanity had a right to feel aggrieved, and
think itself placed in a false and difficult position. What would the
Romans have done, supposing Hannibal had cried? History has not even
considered the possibility. Rules and precedents should be strictly
observed on both sides. When they are vi