ing!

She entered; and the dull, disordered school-room, with its leaf-strewn
floor all covered with broken branches and naked boughs of chopped-up
evergreens, its mass of piled forms, its lumbering desks and hassocks,
its broken windows, its down-hanging maps of colossal continents, seemed
changed all at once, in a moment, as if by the touch of some magic wand,
into an enchanted palace.

The fairy princess had at last appeared, the sleeping beauty been
awakened; and all was altered.

The semi-transparent sprig of mistletoe, which Seraphine Dasher had
mischievously suspended over the doorway, looked like a chaplet of
pearls; the pointed stems of yew became frosted in silver; the
variegated holly was transformed into branches of malachite, ornamented
with a network of gold, its bright red berries glowing with a ruddy
reflection as of interspersed rubies; while, above all, the glorious
sunshine, streaming in through the shattered panes of the oriel at the
eastern end, cast floods of quickening, mellow light, to the remotest
corners of the room, making the floating atoms of dust turn to waves of
powdery amber, and enriching every object it touched with its luminous
rays. Even the very representations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, on the
walls, lost their typographical characteristics, and shone out to me in
the guise of tapestried chronicles, ancient as those of Bayeux,
describing deeds of gallant chivalry--so my fancy pictured--and love,
and knight-errantry, painted over with oriental arabesques in crimson
gilding, the cunning handiwork of the potent sun-god. Her coming in
effected all this to my mind.

What a darling she looked, sitting there, with a pretty little scarlet
and white sontag, of soft wool knitting, crossed over her bosom and
clasped round her dainty, dainty waist; her busy fingers industriously
weaving broad ivy garlands for the church columns, and her sweet, calm
face bent earnestly over her task--the surrounding foliage, scattered
here, there, and everywhere, bringing out her well-formed figure in
relief, just like a picture in some rustic portrait frame! Micat inter
omnes, as Virgil sang of "the young Marcellus," his hero: she "glistened
out before them all."

Of course she was introduced to me.

"Mr Lorton--Miss Minnie Clyde." Now, at last, I had met her and knew
her name! What a pretty name she had, too, as little Miss Pimpernell
had said! Just in keeping with its owner.

As my name was p