join in the chorus of complaints. She ate her
meals thankfully, and did not find her food either
scanty or repulsive. Perhaps she was too young
to be a judge of cookery. Perhaps, never
having had a home, she was not in a position to
draw invidious comparisons. And yet I scarcely
think that the young ladies who were among
the most inveterate grumblers had been, as a
rule, nursed in the lap of luxury; many of them
had been at other schools where they were worse
treated, and worse fed. But it was the fashion
to abuse the dietary; and those who spoke well
of it were voted mean-spirited creatures. The
insatiable appetite of female youth—for between
ten and fourteen there are few things, out of
the line of a cormorant, to equal a girl's voracity
—may have had something to do with it; nor,
on the other hand, are young ladies at school
the only persons in the world who are given to
quarrelling with their bread-and-butter.

If Lily had been anything of a tale-teller
there would have been sad work between the
authorities and the pupils, owing to these
chronic criticisms on the cuisine. The child
had full license to come and go between the
schoolroom and the parlour; and might have
been found a very convenient spy in the two
naturally hostile camps. A Jesuit's mouth
would have watered to instruct her in the arts
of secret diplomacy; but she knew nothing of
leasing-making; and somehow her open face
and artless ways made those who might have
trained her to be a hypocrite at school, ashamed
of their design, and abortive in their intent.

She had now been three years and a half at
Rhododendron House, and the sum agreed
upon for her maintenance and education had been
regularly paid in yearly sums, always in advance,
by orders on a banker in Cornhill. The drafts
came accompanied by short notes written in
a foreign hand, but in very good English: in
which a person signing himself J. B. Constant
said that he had the honour to enclose the
amount of Miss Floris's account, and that he
would not trouble Mrs. Bunnycastle to make
any communication to him, for the information
of her papa as to the young lady's health
and progress, since, from means at his command,
he was well informed upon those matters
himself. To the satisfaction of the Bunnycastles at
receiving so liberal a stipend for the board and
education of such a very little girl, was added a
vague apprehension of losing her if they did
not treat her with every kindness, and a dim
consciousness that their proceedings were being
watched over by some occult external influence.
It was under these circumstances, and when
Lily was fast verging upon her ninth year, that
she was one morning dressed in her best and
told that she was to be taken at once to the
drawing-room, where a strange lady waited to
see her.

CHAPTER XIX. LILY'S VISITORS.

Miss Floris sent for to the drawing-room!
A strange lady for Lily! The whole school
wondered at the news. There was a commotion.
The very maid-servants were amazed. Such a
thing had never occurred during the little girl's
three years and a half's residence at Rhododendron
House. She had been set down, by general
acceptation: not as a friendless child—for that
implied pauperism, and the regular discharge
of Lily's school-bills was sufficient evidence of
her having friends somewhere—but as one
whose connexions, whoever they were, resided
far away, and were deterred, by major reasons,
from coming to visit her.

Miss Dallwallah was, to some extent, in the
same position: the requirements of the Indian
Civil Service detaining her papa in his distant
bungalow, and her mamma being dead; but no
one would have dared to call Miss Dallwallah
friendless. The Begum went home, regularly
for the holidays, to the commercial gentleman
at Balham; whereas Lily had never passed,
save under scholastic escort, the outer gates
of Rhododendron House. Those weary weeks
passed in the deserted schoolroom and the
scarcely less deserted house—for the Miss
Bunnycastles were accustomed in holiday-time
to repair to the pleasant shores of Ramsgate
and Margate, in quest of health and husbands;
and Mrs. Bunnycastle was not, at the best of
times, very amusing company for a little girl not
yet eight years of age—were full of sorrowful
memories for Lily. Inquisitive as she was, and
fond of the contemplation of external objects
that she might build mental speculations upon
them, one is apt to grow tired at last, of peering
into inkstands in whose caked depths florid
growths of white fungi have accumulated. The
dusty débris of last half's slate pencils will at last
lose their charm, and novelty cease to emerge
from the names of bygone pupils cut on desks
and forms. Lily remembered, with a shuddering
dread, the lonely dinners and teas that used
to be served to her in the schoolroom; the
sepulchral ticking of clocks all over the
premises; the boldness of a certain black rat that
used to sally from beneath the meat-screen
bookcase, and watch her as she fed, and wink at her
with fierce red eyes, as though he said, "Drop
me plenty of crumbs, or, by my grandmother's
whiskers, I will scale the stool on which your
tiny body is perched, and eat you up!" Lily
was always glad when the holidays were over.
And when Mrs. Bunnycastle's young friends
came back, grumbling, as usual, at having to
recommence their studies, and leave their beds
when the "getting-up" bell rang, she wondered,
in her simple soul, whatever they could have to
be discontented with.

After she had been dressed, and brushed, and
tidied, and made generally spruce and shining
as a new pin, Miss Barbara took her by the
hand, and led her to the best parlour.

There was a lady waiting for her. She was
a very handsome lady, not in her first youth,
but in her second, which, very probably, was
handsomer than the first had been. She was
very splendidly dressed: so splendidly, that
Lily, suddenly collecting all that she had heard
about the Arabian Nights, instantly put her