It was in vain that the young ladies requested to be apprised of the cause of her sudden alarm, for Miss Wewitz knew well enough that it would not be safe to make them acquainted with the real state of the case; accordingly, she excused herself by saying that she was called home suddenly, and begged that Miss Chutney would prepare to return to Parthenon House as soon as possible. During the whole of the journey home. Miss Wewitz was arranging in her own mind what course of action she should adopt—that her mother had been imprudent enough to act as she had, hardly surprised her, for she was continually doing the most peculiar things “for the best,” as she called it, which invariably turned out for the worst. A few months back, she had consented to receive the daughter of a neighbouring milkman, as a pupil on the “reciprocal system;” and no sooner was it discovered by the attorney’s daughter that there was what they were pleased to call a milkmaid in the establishment, than she lost no less than six of her pupils, and “all carriage people,” the very next vacation; and now Mrs. Wewitz had let off “one of her wings” to a swarm of dirty Frenchmen, in the hopes, as she said, of getting the taxes out of them. What was to be done with Chutney, thought Miss Wewitz to herself, under the distressing circumstances, was more than she could tell; she only knew _that_ girl’s morals had cost her more trouble than all her other pupils put together. To trust her out of her sight was more than she dare do, or else she certainly would have left her at her schoolfellow’s until the Frenchman had been got out of the house. But while the girl was under her own eye no harm could possibly come to her, though, with a swarm of horrid Frenchmen on the premises, it would be as much as she could do to look after her, she was such a giddy, weak thing, ready to fall in love with the first man who looked at her. However, Miss Wewitz had made up her mind to one thing—and that was, to keep her in the music-room so long as these men were in the house. Thus ruminating, Miss Wewitz passed the journey. On reaching Wimbledon Common, she was horrified to find that, in front of her best bed-room windows, immediately above the long board which stretched across the entire length of the house, and on which was inscribed, in large gilt letters, “ESTABLISHMENT FOR YOUNG LADIES,” there dangled some dozen of newly-washed shirt-collars, and about half the number of dickeys, while, lolling out of the windows, appeared two or three long-bearded Frenchmen, puffing away huge meerschaum pipes, and enveloped in clouds of smoke, as they amused themselves by spitting at the sun-dial.