When papa got up to go away, I could not help crying a little; for, though I was fifteen, I had never been away from home before. However, I soon came round after he was once fairly gone. Polly was longer recovering herself; but she, too, soon got over it, when I told her that if we cried the girls would be sure to call us cry-babies. Presently Miss Pilgrim, who had considerately left us for a few minutes to let us have our cry out, came back again, and took us up to show us our room, where we could take off our things. She also kindly sent for Clara Fairthorne, so that we might go down into the schoolroom with some one we knew. It was rather an ordeal going in there, and seeing all the faces lifted up from their work to look at the new comers. However, it was not so bad as we had expected; they did not stare at us disagreeably, nor did they, when we went out into the playground afterwards, ask us so many questions as papa had warned us they would. Indeed, there was no occasion for their doing so, as they had heard all about us from Clara. One or two of them took us under their special protection, as it were, for the first few days, and we felt at home very much sooner than I had expected that we should do. We were about twenty in all, from Annie Morgan and Selma Colman, the two parlour boarders, down to Julia Jackson, a West-Indian child of eleven years old, the darling and pet of the whole school. I am not going to write a long account of my schooldays. The daily routine of one girl's school is so much like that of another, that there is nothing new to be told of it; the little disputes, the rivalries, the friendships sworn to last for life, but which seldom survive a year or two of occasional correspondence,--all these things have been so frequently told, that I shall not repeat them, but shall only mention briefly such incidents as had an effect upon my after life. The account of one day's work is a description of all. Breakfast at eight; school from half-past eight until twelve; then a walk for three-quarters of an hour. Dinner at one; play for half an hour; school from two till half-past five; another half-hour's play; tea at six; school till eight; then to bed.