I had quite taken the turn now, and was trying to bear it all, and put up with everything as well as I could, even with the horribly regular meals which we used to sit down to at a table where all the knives and forks were cripples--some loose in their handles, some were cracked, some were bent, and others looked over their shoulders. One horrid thing came out one day, and peppered my dinner with rosiny dust; and there it was--a fork--sticking upright in a piece of tough stewed steak, although two of the prongs were bent; and when some of the girls tittered, Miss Furness said that I ought to have known better, and that such behaviour was most unladylike and unbecoming. But there, she was naturally an unpleasant, crabby old thing, and never hardly opened her lips to speak without saying words that were all crooked and full of corners. She once told Celia Blang--the pupil she petted, and who used to tell her tales--that she had been considered very handsome, and was called the "flower of the village;" but if she was, they must have meant the flower of the vinegar plant--for it is impossible to conceive a more acid old creature. In church, too, it was enough to make one turn round and slap her; for if she did not copy from the vicar, and take to repeating the responses out quite terribly loud, and before the officiating priest, so as to make believe how devout she was, when it really seemed to me that it was only to make herself conspicuous. And then, to see the way in which the vain old thing used to dress her thin, straggley hair! I do not laugh at people because their hair is not luxuriant or is turning grey, but at their vanity, which I am sure deserves it; and anybody is welcome to laugh at mine. As for Miss Furness's hair, there was a bit of false here and another bit there, and so different in shade and texture to her own that it was quite shocking to see how artificial she looked; while, to make matters ten times worse, she could not wear her hair plain, but in that old-fashioned Eugenie style, stretching the skin of her face out so tightly that her red nose shone, and she was continually on the grin. And yet I've caught her standing before the glass in the drawing-room, to simper and smile at herself, as if she were a goddess of beauty.