escape infection, only twenty-nine returned to
resume their studies."

"And then, you know, Mr. Legg, the coal
merchant, who had four daughters here with the
smallest heads and the largest appetites it is
possible to conceive, had the wickedness and
dishonesty to go bankrupt, and we never got a
penny for two quarters' schooling of the whole
four."

"Rent and taxes are heavy; risks are numerous;
parents are, as you remark with pardonable
severity, stingy; provisions are dear"—thus
went on, discreetly pondering aloud, Mr. Drax
—"and the fifty guineas are to be paid by half-
yearly payments, in advance.  Well, dear ladies,
I think, if I were you, I should take the little
girl."

"So young a child can't eat much," mused
Miss Adelaide.

"She won't want any accomplishments yet
awhile, and when she does we must ask higher
terms."

"And her papa is evidently a gentleman,"
Miss Barbara added.

"To say nothing of the man-servant with
the diamond ring," interposed Adelaide,
somewhat maliciously.

"With one so young," wound up Mrs.
Bunnycastle, with soft didacticism, "on a mind so
tender and so plastic, who shall say what
durable and valuable impressions may not be
made?  How many children are treated with
harshness and want of consideration; how many
have been set down as dunces and idlers,
because their natures have not been understood;
because their capacities have not been discriminatingly
ascertained; because their susceptibilities
have not been worked upon; because the
responsive chords in their characters have not
been touched by the judicious fingers of
kindness and sympathy—"

"There, ma, that will do," Miss Adelaide
broke in, with a shake of sadness in her voice;
"we're talking business, and don't want
extracts from the prospectus at supper-time.  The
principal stumbling-block to me, dear doctor, is
the absence of references.  We are, you know,
so very exclusive."

Exclusiveness at Rhododendron House meant
this—and it has pretty nearly the same signification
at five hundred boarding-schools—the
Bunnycastles had a decided objection to taking
any pupils unless they were perfectly certain of
punctuality in the receipt of quarterly payments
from their relatives or friends.

"Admitting that the want of satisfactory
references is a serious impediment," remarked Mr.
Drax, with his discreetest smile, "is it an
insuperable one?"

"It may have been a love-match," suggested
Adelaide.

"Or a scion of nobility," added Celia.

"Or one against whom great machinations
have been formed," said Barbara.

"Stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs.
Bunnycastle, with an energy unusual to one of her
soft and sentimental nature.  "When you've
kept a school as long as I have, girls, you'll
know that there are, as the doctor says,
hundreds of reasons for putting a little bit of a
child away, and leaving her under proper care
till she's grown up.  I think we're all agreed?
The little one is to be taken?"

"Certainly," chorused the three maidens.

"You could not have arrived at a more
sagacious decision," acquiesced Mr. Drax.

"But the most embarrassing thing of all is,"
Miss Adelaide resumed, "that she is to be brought
here this very night. We expect her papa every
minute. The gentleman with the diamond ring—
the man-servant, I mean—said they might be as
late as half-past ten.  Only fancy a visit, at so
late an hour, and from a stranger too, at
Rhododendron House!  Such a thing has never
happened to us since we first came here.  And
it was principally for that reason, doctor, that we
asked you to come.  We wished, in case you
advised us to take this little thing, to have you
here, as a kind of witness, as it were, when her
papa brought her."

"Perhaps her papa will object,"  remarked
Barbara.

"To what?  To something he can't see any
more than the man in the moon can?" retorted
her sister, snappishly.  "Nothing would be
likelier than his objection to a stranger being
present if his object is to secure secresy; but,
at the same time, nothing is easier than to avoid
the slightest unpleasantness."

"Of course, of course,"  said the discreet
apothecary.  "I apprehend your meaning in a
moment, my dear young lady.  You wish me to
be a witness, but an invisible one.  You must
receive the visitors in the front drawing-room.
If you will kindly have the lamp lighted there, and
leave me here in darkness (and, he might have
added, 'in discretion'), with one of the folding-
doors the slightest degree in the world on the
jar, I shall be an auditor to all that passes, and
you may depend on my adroitness to see as well
as hear."

Miss Adelaide Bunnycastle clapped her hands
in grave applause at the apothecary's suggestion.
Celia regarded him with eyes of favour.
Barbara smiled upon him. Old Mrs. Bunnycastle
was just on the point of asking him if he
would take just one little drop more of spirits-
and-water (although I am certain that Drax, in
his discretion, would have refused), when the
gate bell was rung, and, a moment afterwards,
the sound of carriage-wheels was heard crunching
the gravel-walk before Rhododendron House.
The ladies hurried into the drawing-room.  A
solemn lamp with a green shade round it was
hastily illumined; and presently Pepper
announced that two gentlemen, with a little child,
requested an interview with Mrs. and the Miss
Bunnycastles.

CHAPTER VI.  LILY SITS UP LATE.

FRANCIS BLUNT, ESQ., sometimes called Frank,
but familiarly known as Griffin, entered the
scholastic presence with the assured step of one
who felt himself among those ready to do him