England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Schools -- Fiction; Teenage girls -- Fiction
It was only natural that we should look round the church after being
comfortably seated, when there, in one of the sideway seats were the two
masters, casting an eye up towards us every now and then, and looking so
hard that I felt quite ashamed, and was afraid it would be observed; but
I soon remembered that our three Graces were sitting in the pew behind,
and I knew they felt sure that the glances were directed at them. Poor
things! And then it was that I had that thought come into my head,
forcing its way in as if to make its abode there, although I shut my
eyes tightly, and determined not to think of anything of the kind.
People take opiates for pains bodily; but why, oh! why do not Savoury
and Moore, or Godfrey and Cooke, or somebody or another bring out an
opiate for pains mental? What would I not have given that day to have
lulled the excitement of my feelings, and to have attended quietly to my
duties as I ought?
Tiresome, tiresome, tiresome!--oh, how tiresome it was, day after day,
to go back to all the old school ways and habits--writing exercises,
learning lessons, saying them, and being corrected and snubbed; heard to
read, one's emphasis here, there, and everywhere found fault with, when
I'm sure I read far better than those who heard me. Then my writing was
not in accordance with Mrs Blunt's ideas of penmanship.
There were no novels to read; no _Times_, with its mysterious
advertisements, that seem to mean such a deal; no morning concerts, no
walks or rides--only exercise, two and two, as walking advertisements of
the Cedars. I declare at last, in spite of the French lessons--or
perhaps partly owing to the whirl within me, and the dreadfully worried
state I was in--I grew quite low-spirited, and could not eat, and used
to sit and mope, and I could see that I was getting paler and paler
every day.
This sort of thing, though, would not do for Mrs Blunt, who saw in it
the probable loss of a pupil and plenty of pounds a year; and one
morning there was a summons for me to go into the drawing-room, where
I found Mrs Blunt and a gentleman in black--so prim, so
white-handkerchiefed and gold-sealed! All his grey hair was brushed up
into a point, like an ice-mountain on the top of his head; while,
whenever he spoke, his words came rolling out like great sugar-coated
pills--so soft, so sweet, so smooth, you might have taken him for a
great mechanical bon-bon box, and the hand he gently waved for the
spring that set him in motion. I knew well enough that he was a doctor,
as soon as I went in, and that he had been sent for to see me.
"Miss Bozerne, Dr Boole," said Mrs Blunt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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