recognised the inexpediency of a personal
conflict with a pensionnaire whose only fault was
that her friends had neglected to pay her half-
yearly bills. Besides, she knew that the charges
she brought against the girl of being "idle,
impertinent, worthless, and insubordinate," were
groundless. There were few girls in the school
more studious than Lily, and there was not
one better conducted.

She sat down at her bureau again, replaced the
packets in the drawer, and locked it. "A truce
to these absurdities," she said. " No harm has
been done you. Let us have no more whimpering,
or we will see what effect the atmosphere of
the wood-cellar—la cave au bois—and two days'
bread-and-water will have upon you. Come
forward, and stand in front of this bureau, and
listen to me."

Lily came forward as she was commanded.
She hastily dried her eyes, and stood before the
Marcassin, pale, but composed.

"People who eat bread must earn it,"
remarked the schoolmistress. "Don't think I
am going to keep you—pour vos beaux yeux—
for your own sweet sake. If you continue to
live here, you must work. Are you ready to
work?"

"Yes, madame, as hard as ever you wish
me."

"We shall see. If I sent you away from here,
your destination would be the Préfecture de
Police. You have no domicile, no papers, no
name even that offers reasonable proof of identity,
and I question whether the consul of your nation
would be at the trouble of reclaiming you. The
woman who brought you here—I wish I could
catch sight of her, la vaurienne!—spoke English,
but she was French. She told me you had
been born in France. Thus, all the police could
do for you would be to send you to a house of
correction—a penitentiary, understand me well
—where you would be confined till you were
twenty-one years of age, where you would be
kept all day, either kneeling on the cold stones
singing psalms, or working your fingers to the
bone with needlework, under the tutelage of the
good grey sisters who have little machines and
leathern thongs to keep their correctionnaires in
order."

Lily's heart sank within her. She had heard
appalling stories of the severities practised in the
Maisons de Correction—stories which, in justice
to the good nuns who conduct those establishments,
must be branded as apocryphal. Could
they be worse stories than Lily might tell of the
Pension Marcassin?

"You may remain here," continued the Marcassin.
"But on a different footing. You are
no longer a pensionnaire, but a fille de classe.
You will do what you are told, and learn what
you are permitted, and will make yourself as useful
as common gratitude for being fed, lodged, and
clothed should render you. "We will say nothing
of the arrears for your board and education. If
I cannot discover the swindlers who have cozened
me out of my money you and I will have some
future conversation on the matter. Now you
may go."

CAREFULLY MOVED IN TOWN AND
COUNTRY.

IF any reader of this periodical should require
full and valuable information regarding the
houses in the various suburbs of London, their
size, rent, advantages and disadvantages, annual
amount of sewer's rate and land tax, soil, climate,
quality of water, and other particulars, let him
address a letter, post-paid, to "Wanderer,"
under cover to the Conductor, and he will have
his heart's desire. I am "Wanderer," if you
please, and I am in a position to give the
information named; for, during the last ten years,
I have led a nomadic and peripatetic existence:
now becoming the tenant of a villa here, now
blossoming as the denizen of a mansion there,
sipping the sweets of the assessed taxes and the
parochial rates, and then flying off with my
furniture in several large vans to a distant
neighbourhood. Want of money, possession of
funds, hatred of town, detestation of the
country, a cheerful misanthropy, and an
unpleasant gregariousness, all these have, one by
one, acted upon me, and made me their slave.
What I have learned by sad experience, I
now purpose to teach: setting myself up as a
pillar of example and warning to my dissatisfied
fellow-creatures.

Before I married, I lived in chambers in
Piccadilly, kept my horse, belonged to the
Brummel Club, and was looked upon as rather a
fine fellow; but when I married, my Uncle Snape
(from whom I obtained the supplies for my
expenses and who was a confirmed woman-hater)
at once stopped my allowance, and I had
nothing but my professional earnings as an Old
Bailey barrister, and a hundred a year, which I
had inherited. Under these circumstances I
had intended going into lodgings; but my wife's
family (I don't know exactly what that means:
she has no mother, and her father never
interferes with her or her sisters: I think it must be
her sisters who are the family, but we always
speak of "the family") were very genteel, and
looked upon lodgings as low; so it was generally
understood that I must take a house, and that
"the family" would help to furnish it. I need
not mention that there was a great discussion
as to where the house should be. The family
lived in St. John's Wood, and wished us to
be near them; but the rents in that saintly
neighbourhood were beyond my means, and,
after a great deal of searching and heart-aching
worry, after inspecting a dozen "exact things,"
"just what you wanted," and "such treasures!"
found for me by friends, none of which would
do, I at last took a house in Bass's-buildings, in
the New-road. That great thoroughfare has
since been sub-divided, I think, but then it was
the New-road stretching from Paddington to
Islington, and our house was about a mile from