ttractions offered to tenants;
the country presented no facilities for hunting; and the only stream in
the neighborhood was not preserved. In consequence of these drawbacks,
the merchant's representatives had to choose between a proposal to use
Netherwoods as a lunatic asylum, or to accept as tenant the respectable
mistress of a fashionable and prosperous school. They decided in favor
of Miss Ladd.

The contemplated change in Francine's position was accomplished, in that
vast house, without inconvenience. There were rooms unoccupied, even
when the limit assigned to the number of pupils had been reached. On the
re-opening of the school, Francine was offered her choice between two
rooms on one of the upper stories, and two rooms on the ground floor.
She chose these last.

Her sitting-room and bedroom, situated at the back of the house,
communicated with each other. The sitting-room, ornamented with a pretty
paper of delicate gray, and furnished with curtains of the same color,
had been accordingly named, "The Gray Room." It had a French window,
which opened on the terrace overlooking the garden and the grounds.
Some fine old engravings from the grand landscapes of Claude (part of a
collection of prints possessed by Miss Ladd's father) hung on the walls.
The carpet was in harmony with the curtains; and the furniture was
of light-colored wood, which helped the general effect of subdued
brightness that made the charm of the room. "If you are not happy here,"
Miss Ladd said, "I despair of you." And Francine answered, "Yes, it's
very pretty, but I wish it was not so small."

On the twelfth of August the regular routine of the school was resumed.
Alban Morris found two strangers in his class, to fill the vacancies
left by Emily and Cecilia. Mrs. Ellmother was duly established in her
new place. She produced an unfavorable impression in the servants'
hall--not (as the handsome chief housemaid explained) because she
was ugly and old, but because she was "a person who didn't talk." The
prejudice against habitual silence, among the lower order of the people,
is almost as inveterate as the prejudice against red hair.

In the evening, on that first day of renewed studies--while the girls
were in the grounds, after tea--Francine had at last completed the
arrangement of her rooms, and had dismissed Mrs. Ellmother (kept hard
at work since the morning) to take a little rest. Standing alone at her
window, the West Indian heiress wonder