They had been guilty of nicknaming Miss Millar "Baby," because she had been so lachrymose and shiftless when she came to Thirlwall Hall, and had never looked up till she was handed over to Miss Vanhansen, who had given her "airings" and "outings" all very well for a baby, and much to Baby's taste as it seemed, but not exactly severe study. Yet in spite of it all, and in spite of the halting inaccuracy of the training in a private ladies'-school, May Millar knew more by sheer instinct, as it sounded, of Alcestis, and felt more with her and for her, than the best of those who professed to be her interpreters. It was therefore not with wisely repairing the breaches in her Latin and Greek, and laying these foundations afresh, as Rose was doing with her art under Mr. St. Foy in London, that May was engrossed. It was with becoming a bond-slave to those ambitious players. She lent herself to the minutest details of their attempt, coached herself in them day and night, till she could coach everybody in turn, and figured behind backs as universal prompter, dresser, stage-manager--the girl who had been so lifeless and incapable of looking after herself when she first came among them that they had styled her the baby of the establishment! Miss Lascelles, who was deeply interested in the play, both in her highly-finished scholarship, and for the credit of Thirlwall Hall, was electrified when she discovered the efficient coadjutor whom the performers had found. "I am afraid there has been a mistake made, and time lost," she said to herself ruefully. "How could I be so shortsighted, when there is the making of the finest scholar in the Hall in Miss Millar, who threatened to hang so heavily on my hands that I was fain to send her to play with our generous 'Barbarian.' What discrimination, what taste and feeling with regard to the selection and fit declamation of these passages which we were doubtful whether to retain or reject, or what to do with them! With what pretty girlish shyness and timidity she made the suggestions! Nothing but her passionate love of the subject, and her jealousy for its honour, as it were, with her intense craving to have it fitly expressed, would have induced her to come forward. I should like to hear what Professor Hennessy," naming a great name among classical authorities, "thinks of this young girl's interpretation of several parts of the play when he comes to hear them. I should like to introduce Miss Millar to him if she were not so frightened, and if she had taken the place which she ought to have held to begin with. It is too late to rectify the mistake and set her to work this term, and she had much better not go in for the Markham scholarship which her father spoke of--that would be worse than useless. But we'll turn over a new leaf next term. After all, she is very young; and I suppose it is of no great consequence that she has wasted her first half. Her family are professional