QUITE ALONE.

BOOK THE FIRST: CHILDHOOD.

CHAPTER XVIII. LILY IS SENT FOR TO THE
DRAWING-ROOM.

YEARS sped on, and the baby became a child,
the child a school-girl. Years sped on—outside
in wars tumults and revolts, in famines and
shipwrecks, in debates and dancing-parties, in
pestilence and in new operas; inside, in the
same dull round of little tasks, little duties,
little quarrels, little pleasures, little pains.
Rhododendron House did not trouble itself about
Corporation Reform, or the new Poor Law Board.
Unmoved it beheld Strasburg expeditions,
Fieschi conspiracies, trials of Dorchester labourers.
Fashions came in and came out, but
there was no material alteration in the cut of
pinafores at Stockwell. Corn-law questions
convulsed the country, and Miss Bunnycastle
grumbled at the baker's bill, but the five-and-
thirty boarders had four thin parallelograms
apiece, of bread thinly veneered with Dorset
butter, for breakfast, and four for tea, whether
wheat was up or down in the market. Currency
controversies agitated parliaments, engendered
monstrous blue-books, and made financiers'
lives a burden to them; but every Saturday, at
noon, Miss Adelaide Bunnycastle appeared in
the schoolroom with a tray set out with the
boarders' weekly pocket-money, piled in
symmetrical little heaps, mainly composed of coppers.
The hebdomadal average was fourpence. A
young lady who had sixpence a week was held
to have an intimate connexion with the
plutocracy; a shilling a week, and she was set
down wealthy. As for the parlour-boarders,
who brought golden sovereigns to school with
them after the holidays, and were continually
having five shillings (with a cake) sent to them
per carrier, they were considered as daughters
of the house of Rothschild. Miss Dallwallah
had once actually exhibited a five-pound note,
payable on demand by the Governor and
Company of the Bank of England. It was bran
new, crisp, and gleaming. She showed it to her
chosen companions as a mark of high favour
towards them. Many were of opinion that it
should be framed and glazed. Mrs. Bunnycastle,
alarmed at the idea of a young lady not
yet sixteen having so much money, remonstrated
with Mr. Coopinghurst, the commercial gentleman
in Austin Friars who was the agent in
England of Miss Dallwallah's papa, and at whose
country-house at Balham the Sultana Scheherazade
passed her Midsummer and Christmas
holidays. Mr. Coopinghurst curtly replied,
that if Mrs. Bunnycastle was not satisfied
with her pupil, he was ready to remove the
young lady at the next vacation, and that,
indeed, he had been thinking of seeking out a
superior school for Miss Dallwallah, who, in all
probability, would be the inheritress of great
wealth. Mrs. Bunnycastle thenceforth grumbled
no more; if the Begum had brought half a
dozen lacs of rupees back with her in her playbox
at the beginning of the next half-year, the
schoolmistress would never have proffered a
word of complaint.

Lily had grown up to be eight years old. It
was agreed on all hands, that although her figure
was graceful and well formed, she would never
be tall. She had developed by easy stages, and
had not "shot up " in the bean-stalk fashion.
The Bunnycastles granted that her brown hair
was very soft and wavy, that her hands and feet
were very small, that her skin was exquisitely
white, that her eyes were very large and blue,
that her mouth was delicate and well formed,
and garnished with teeth of irreproachable
regularity and whiteness; but they authoritatively
declared that she was not pretty, and would
never become a beauty. She would be "pleasing,"
nothing more. The truth must out, and
I don't think the Bunnycastles libelled her;
Lily's nose was so decidedly retroussé as to be
close upon the absolute snub. But it was a
very charming little nose for all that—the coral
and ivory nostrils almost transparent, the bridge
slight and short, but coquettish, as a bridge over
an artificial rivulet in a pleasure-garden. Then
her forehead was decidedly a little too low. It
has been my fortune to make acquaintance with
a number of ladies and gentlemen of all ages,
with foreheads as broad and lofty as pumpkins,
and who were more or less idiots; therefore
I am not disposed to abide by the dictum of
Miss Barbara Bunnycastle, who deplored the
shallowness of Lily's brow, and was certain that
she would turn out a fool. Finally, the shape of
her visage inclined more to the square than to the
oval. Unrelieved by expression or animation,
Lily's face would, from physiognomists—whose
broad principles of doctrine one should respect,