the rival houses were consulted; Jagg only
refrained from going to law with Rhododendron
House because Rhododendron House had him
on the hip, in the fact of one of the maid-servants
making solemn asseveration that he was not only
in the scandalous habit of winking at her when
she went out on errands, but had on one occasion
had the unmanly brutality to tell her that she
was a " duck." Had justice taken cognisance of
the wretch's misdeeds, it would have been an
aggravated assault case at the very least—
supposing, at least, that wholesome statute to have
been in force at the period. The feud at last
was compromised, and the chevaux-de-frise was
suffered to rust in peace. They were not very
firmly fixed, and half of the spikes tumbled over
into Jagg's garden: who avenged himself, let us
hope, by forthwith disposing of them at marine
stores.

There had been, of course, a primary cause for
this envenomed quarrel, but it was wrapt in
uncertainty. A teacher who had gone away
knew all about it, but to the existing generation
it was a mystery. Some said that Mr. Jagg, a
widower with one daughter, had wished the
Bunnycastles to take her on reduced terms, but
that they had declined— standing out to the last
that washing, music, and seat at church, should
be extras. Others declared that the ladies of
Rhododendron House had manifested an almost
unseemly anxiety to secure Miss Jagg as an
inmate; but that her uncivil parent had
contumeliously declared that he would sooner send
her to a charity school than to the Bunnycastles.
Finally, it was darkly bruited about among the
elder girls that, not so many months before, a
treaty of alliance, offensive, defensive, and
matrimonial, had been in contemplation between the
houses of Jagg and Bunnycastle— Miss Celia
being the high contracting party of the last-named
family. But the treaty had come— as
treaties often do— to nothing; and this was why,
perhaps, the Saint Scholasticas of Rhododendron
House always spoke of the crusty widower as a
monster, a villain, and a base wretch; while the
unfeeling Jagg, on his side, and with
characteristic coarseness, declared, laying a scornful
finger by the side of his ribald nose, that he had
found out the whole thing was a Plant, and had
declared off, in time.

This was not among the things that Lily
learned; but the mention of the barred-up door
reminded me of the great Bunnycastle and Jagg
vendetta. It is time, however, to go in-doors.
There, the things that the child learned were
manifold. Into the drawing-room, and the
supper-parlour beyond, she was but rarely
permitted to peep, but she studied all the bedrooms
— from Mrs. Bunnycastle's imposing chamber,
to the less pretentious apartments occupied
by the Miss Bunnycastles, and the dormitories,
numbered one to five, where the five-and-thirty
boarders slept on seventeen and a half iron
bedsteads. The half bed was a turn-up one— an
impostor— by day an escritoire. The law of
kindness had, somehow, omitted to enact that
the pupils should not sleep two in a bed; and
Miss Furblow, the draper's daughter, was the
only young lady in statu pupillari privileged to
have an entire bed— it was the half one, the
impostor— to herself.

There were all kinds of things to be learned
in these bedrooms— things grave, and things
gay. There were hours of musing evoked from
huge chests of drawers— as to whether they grew
there, and what they held. There were fearful
speculations as to the birds and flowers on chintz
draperies, and dreadful images conjured up of
what, or who, might be hidden behind heavy
curtains, or under Mrs. Bunnycastle's four-poster,
or within the parapet of the great
canopied tester. There were looking-glasses to be
furtively glanced in, and then run away from;
portraits and engravings on the walls to study;
Moses in the Bulrushes, and Jephtha's Rash
Vow; Abraham's Sacrifice, and his late Royal
Highness the Duke of York in full regimentals;
the Temple of Concord in Hyde Park, and the
Horrible Ceremony of Suttee as performed in
the East Indies; the Reverend Mr. M'Quashie,
Editor of the Pædo-Baptist's Missionary
Chronicle, and the Island of Corfu; with other works
of art, to be pondered over. There were gowns
and shawls to be detached, in imagination, from
their pegs and peopled with flesh and blood.
There was the great lumber-room, where all the
five-and-thirty boarders' boxes were deposited
when they came home for the holidays— a very
caravanserai full of trunks. There was the
maid-servant's room, where Lily had been woke up by
the sun, and half terrified to death by the bell,
on the first morning after her coming. There
were chairs to jump on, and hearth-rugs to lift
the corners of, and clocks to whose ticking an
attentive ear was lent. There were books in
cases, and books in hanging shelves, and plated
candlesticks, and snuffer-trays, and two great
old china mandarins, ready, on the slightest
encouragement of a little finger, to loll out their
tongues, and wag their peacock's feather and
blue-buttoned heads in a manner wonderful, though
somewhat awful, to behold. All these objects of
research were, to Lily, beautiful, but perplexing.
During the long hours of study, while the girls
were pent up in the schoolroom, droning and
gabbling, and the governesses squabbling with
and girding at them, Lily was permitted, whenever
she grew tired of school— which was generally
about five minutes after she had taken her
seat on the little stool apportioned to her— to
slip out, and wander up and down the house;
whose contents gave her, spark by spark, a little
glimmering light. And then, in the play hours,
she would ask questions innumerable, both of the
girls and of the teachers, with a frank fearlessness
amazing to the former, who were generally
warned off from the premises of inquisitiveness
as being "unladylike," and so by degrees, without
any book-knowledge, Lily Floris began to
learn things.