rather a funny
mistake you made, you know. I will try and explain. You see, a break in
billiards does not mean a fall; it means that you go on scoring."

"Oh!" said Margaret, in the same dejected accents, and not feeling at all
enlightened, "and what does going on scoring mean?"

"Why, that it is still your turn to play, of course," said Nancy, and her
tone was so surprised that Margaret thought it wiser to ask no more
questions in case she displayed an ignorance so great as to rouse
suspicion as to where she could have been brought up.

"I wish they would stop laughing at me," she said miserably.

"Why! Do you mind being laughed at so much as all that," Nancy said. "I
should have thought that as a governess in a school you would have got
used to it. For schoolgirls are awful quizzes. Perhaps, though, as you
were a governess they did it behind your back."

"They certainly did not do it to my face," Margaret said.

"Oh, well, they will here," said Nancy. "Everybody chaffs everybody else
in this house pretty freely. What you must do is to chaff back; but if
you don't feel equal to that just at first, just grin, and let them think
you don't care a rap."

At that moment heavy footsteps were heard in the passage and Mrs. Danvers
came into the hall.

"Ah, here you are, Miss Carson. I could not think where you had got to.
I just stopped to tell my shameless young folk what I thought of them for
laughing like that at a stranger. Nancy, you lazy girl, you ought to have
been watching the match instead of lying here. It was a close thing. Maud
won. Really she has a wonderful eye. There is simply no game she cannot
excel in if she chose. She----" But then Mrs. Danvers catching sight of
Margaret's miserable expression pulled herself up short just as she had
been about to launch forth into a glowing account of her daughter's
skill. "But all the same, it was shameful of them to laugh at you like
that, Miss Carson. Your first night too, when you are not used to them."

"Just what I said, Aunt Mary," chimed in Nancy, who had seen that Mrs.
Danvers casual treatment of the incident which had brought such
mortification to the new governess was making the latter feel still
more lost and ill at ease. "She'll soon get used to it though, and will
care just as little as anybody when her turn comes to be rotted."

"And above all things keep your temper, my dear," said Mrs. Danvers.
"But that remark," she added hastily, seeing that Marg