It really was enough to make one hit her. I never did take a Seidlitz powder but once, and then it was just after reading "Undine" with the Fraulein, and my head was all full of water-nymphs, and gods, and "The Mummelsee and the Water Maidens," and all sorts. And when I shut my eyes, and drank the fizzing-up thing, it all seemed to tickle my nose and lips; and I declare if I did not half fancy I was drinking the waters of the sparkling Rhine, and one of the water-gods had risen to kiss me, and that was his nasty prickly moustache I had felt. But to return to that dreadful morning when Patty wanted me to take one of her Seidlitz powders. "Mix 'em in two glasses is best," she went on, without taking any notice of my look of disgust--"the white paper in one, and the blue paper in the other, and then drink off the blue first, and wait while you count twenty, and then drink off the white one--slushions they call 'em. It does make you feel so droll, and does your head ever so much good. Do have one, dear!" I know that I must have slapped her--nothing could have prevented it--if just then the door had not been unlocked, and that horrible Miss Furness came in. "When you are ready, Miss Smith, you will descend with Miss Bozerne--I will wait for you," said the screwy old thing; but she took not the slightest notice of poor Clara, who sat there by the window, with her forehead all wrinkled up, and looking at least ten years older. It was of no good for one's heart to bleed for her, not a bit, with Miss Furness, who had undertaken to act the part of gaoler, there; so I gave the poor, suffering darling one last, meaning look, which was of no use, for it was wasted through the poor thing not looking up; and then I followed Miss Furness out of the room, side by side with Patty Smith, whose saucer eyes grew quite cheese-platish as she saw the door locked to keep poor Clara in; and then the tiresome thing kept bothering me in whispers to know what was the matter, for she was quite afraid of Miss Furness. However, I answered nothing, and went into the miserable, dreary, damp-looking classroom with an aching heart, and waited till the breakfast bell rang. For there was a bell rung for everything, when there was not the slightest necessity for such nonsense, only it all aided to make the Cedars imposing, and advertised it to the country round. But when I went into the hall, to cross it to reach the breakfast-room, there were a couple of boxes and a bundle at the foot of the back stairs, and the tall page getting himself into a tangle with some cord as he pretended to be tying them up. Just then the drawing-room door opened, and I heard Mrs Blunt say-- "And don't apply to me for a character, whatever you do;" whilst, very red-eyed and weeping, out came Sarah Ann, the housemaid. "Once more," said Mrs Blunt, "do you mean to tell me who it was that I distinctly saw, with my very own eyes, standing upon the leads talking to you?"