Well, I don't care. It's the truth; she was a horrible old tabby, with nothing genuine or true about her, or I would not speak so disrespectfully. She did not care a bit for her pupils, more than to value them according to how much they brought her in per annum, so that the drawing-room boarders--there were no parlour boarders there, nothing so common--stood first in her estimation. I felt so vexed that first day, sitting in the drawing-room, I could have pulled off the old thing's turban; and I'm sure that if I had the false front would have come with it. There she was, pointing out the different crayon-drawings upon the wall; and mamma, who cannot tell a decent sketch from a bad one, lifting up her hand and pretending to be in ecstasies. Do you mean to tell me that they did not both know how they were deceiving one another? Stuff! Of course they did, and they both liked it. Mamma praised Mrs Blount, and Mrs Blount praised mamma and her "sweet child"; and I declare it was just like what the dreadful American man said in his horrid, low, clever book--that was so funny, and yet one felt ashamed at having laughed--where he writes to the newspaper editor to puff his show, and promises to return the favour by having all his printing done at his office; and papa read it so funnily, and called it "reciprocity of allaying the irritation of the dorsal region," which we said was much more refined than Mr Artemus Ward's way of putting it. I was quite ashamed of mamma, that I was, for it did seem so little; and, oh! how out of patience I was! But there, that part of the interview came to an end, and a good thing too; for I knew well enough a great deal of it was to show off before me, for of course Mrs Blount had shown mamma the drawings and things before. So then we were taken over the place, and introduced to the teachers and the pupils who had returned, and there really did seem to be some nice girls; but as for the teachers--of all the old, yellow, spectacled things I ever did see, they were the worst; while as for the German Fraulein, I don't know what to say bad enough to describe her, for I never before did see any one so hooked-nosed and parroty. Then we went upstairs to see the dormitories--there were no bedrooms-- and afterwards returned to the drawing-room, where the lady principal kissed me on both cheeks and said I was most welcome to her establishment, and I declare I thought she meant to bite me, for her dreadful teeth went _snap_, though perhaps, like mamma's, they were not well under control.