Mrs. Wewitz knew not what to do under the circumstances. To endeavour to put eight-and-forty soldiers to the rout was more than she dare attempt—and to call in the aid of the police would be, perhaps, not only to cause bloodshed, but to get the whole affair published in the newspapers, and so ruin the school; for what parent, as she justly observed to herself, would dream of confiding an innocent daughter to the care of an establishment where as many as four dozen foreigners were in the habit of being located in one apartment alone. Then she was in a state of continual alarm lest the Sandboys should discover the colony of National Guards she had under her left wing; and how to keep their presence a secret from them was beyond her power to conceive. If she only dare venture to break the distressing intelligence to her daughter in town, she perhaps might be able to bring the business to a happy and speedy termination; but she knew that her dearest Cleopatra would never forgive her imprudence. Then, again, how was she to get rid of the fellows, even before the young ladies returned? for if they would not go now, how was it likely that they would stir at a time when London would have become more full, and there would then be the extra inducement of the impudent fellows remaining on the premises to make love to the young ladies? She would not have that Emily Bonpoint back while those wretches of Frenchmen were about for all she was worth. For if she and her daughter couldn’t be a match for her at other times, a pretty life she would lead them with the left wing packed full of foreigners. It would break her Cleopatra’s heart she knew when she came to hear of it, that the filthy, dirty fellows had been sleeping two together in those beautiful white beds of hers—though how they managed in the short, narrow slips of things, was impossible to say. Besides, if there was one thing that her daughter paid more attention to than another, it was the morals of the tender plants that were placed under her culture—and she would never forgive herself, she was sure, if with all those Frenchmen under the roof any elopement should take place—for not one of them, she was sure, had got a halfpenny to bless himself. For a few days the Sandboys remained in a state of comparative ignorance as to the small army that was then barracked under the same roof with them. Jobby, to be sure, had noticed the number of men in red pantaloons that continually kept going in and out of the premises; but, beyond a passing remark, this had excited little or no astonishment.