"Lily—Lily Floris, ma'am," answered the
child, meekly.

"I ask you for your name of baptism, not
your name of family," interposed Mademoiselle
Espréménil, sharply. "There are half a dozen
Lilies in the school," she added to her coadjutor,
"and three in this class. That will never do.
Never mind, Madame will find some other name
to her. Elle n'est pas grand' chose—she is not of
much account—I fancy;" and she nodded to
Mademoiselle Hudault, and retired, leaving Lily
trembling in the middle of the class.

Mademoiselle Hudault was not ill natured, but
she was over-worked. Her eyes could not be
everywhere, consequently the child who was nearest
her, and on whom her eyes most frequently lighted,
had, habitually, rather a bad time of it; she was
the scapegoat, and suffered for the sins of the
rest of the forty. The forty were certainly enough
to try the patience of Mademoiselle, or of any
other mortal woman. Some of them were
always going to sleep, and had to be shouted up
into wakefulness. Others, who were day children,
would creep on all fours to the corner where the
baskets containing their dinners were deposited,
abstract hunks of bread, bunches of grapes, or
morsels of cold charcuterie—generally strong in
the porcine element—and essay to munch
surreptitiously behind their books or slates. Then
detection followed, and there was a disturbance,
and the contraband provisions were seized, and
Mademoiselle Hudault would threaten to
confiscate "la totalité," or to put the whole of the
class "en pénitence." Add to this the fact that
the majority of the pupils who had lessons to get
by heart were in the habit of repeating their
tasks to themselves in a monotonous drone
—that when a band of small disciples was called
up for "repetition," there was sure to be a book
lost, or a page in an essential part torn out—
that Julie was always making complaints against
Amanda for pinching her, and that the bitter
lamentations of Eulalie in consequence of
Hortense having crammed her left ear full of slate
pencil, were well-nigh incessant—that the
atmosphere of the class-room was close almost to
stifling point, and the odour exceedingly unpleasant
—and that Mademoiselle Hudault's sole
assistant in teaching and managing the forty
girls was a depressed young person of sixteen,
who was a little deaf, and somewhat lame, and
was understood to be maintained out of charity
by Mademoiselle Marcassin, and it maybe judged
how far the mistress of the class was over-worked,
and that her nightly couch was not a bed of
roses.

Mademoiselle Hudault, who spoke no English,
made signs to Lily to sit at the extremity of the
form nearest her, and there the child crouched in
half-listless, half-alarmed quiescence. The strange
noise confused her, the heavy drowsy smell
sickened her. She was very tired and shaken by her
journey; she had eaten nothing since the
morning; the class-room began to swim round; then
all faded into a murky haze, and she fell into a trance
that was half sleeping and half swooning.

She revived to find herself in a little pallet-
bed, in a long low hospital-like room with white-
washed walls. On either side, as far as the eye
could reach, were more pallets, and over against
her, stretched in interminable perspective, a
corresponding line of white ghastly-looking
couches.

There was somebody at her pillow. It was
the merry young lady with the wavy black hair,
who had pulled her dress and made a face at
her, and who had been apostrophised as
Mademoiselle Marygold. No sooner did Lily open
her eyes than this young lady proceeded to kiss
her on both cheeks with great heartiness, bidding
her (to Lily's delight), in English, lie still for a
dear, and she would soon be well.

"You're English and I'm English," quoth the
merry young lady, who spoke with extreme
rapidity, as if to make up for lost time, and
compensate for the many hours during which she
was compelled to hold her tongue. "And
Madame (that's Mademoiselle Marcassin), but
we call her Madame, although she's never been
married, to distinguish her from the rest of the
governesses, who are all old frumps, and
Mademoiselles of course. We're both English, and as
you can't speak a word of French yet, Madame
says I'm to take care of you, and tell you things,
and sit by your side in the third class till you're
able to get on by yourself. And oh! what fun
to be in the third class, and I'm going on for
fifteen, and I shall escape that horrible first
class, with Mademoiselle Glaçon—icicle's her
name, and icicle's her nature—and Ma'mselle
Espréménil—we call her the hippopotamus—
bothering us all day long, to say nothing of Madame;
and when she comes in there's always a blow up.
And now tell me all about yourself, my little
darling. I'm seven years older than you; but
we're the only two English girls in this jail of a
place—and it is a jail, and worse than a jail—
and we must be great cronies."

Here Miss Marygold paused: less, it is to be
apprehended, for want of matter than for want
of breath. Lily's answer had to be given very
slowly and very feebly, and its tenor was mainly
confined to an inquiry as to how she came there,
in broad daylight, and in that bed?

"You weren't very well, and dozed off like;
and you couldn't understand when Ma'mselle
Hudault told you to wake up, and that she'd box
your ears if you didn't; Madame don't allow it,
but Ma'mselle can't help her temper sometimes;
she's not such a cross old thing as the others,
but she's always in a hurry, and that makes her
hasty, and then one of the girls reminded
Ma'mselle that you couldn't speak French, and
another said you were ill, and then they threw
some wine-and-water (out of one of the day-
girls' bottles) over your face, and you didn't
wake up, and so, as you couldn't walk, you were
carried up to this bedroom, which is Dormitory
Number Three, and the doctor came and said