Mrs. Arcularius decided, however, to receive Claire as one of her pupils. There had been a falling-off, of late, in their list. A good many sweet girl-graduates had gone off at her last commencement day. Besides, it was absurd to suppose that any flock could be kept from an incidental black sheep or so. More than this, there was a fascinating intelligence about Claire's face, with its two dark-blue stars of eyes, and a musical sorcery in the child's timid tones when she spoke, that no _diablerie_ of millinery could dispel. It soon proved that Claire's fellow-scholars were far from sharing this latter opinion. She was received among them with haughty coolness, varied by incidental giggles. She suffered three days of silent torture, and at their end told her father, in a passion of tears, that he must take her away from Mrs. Arcularius's school. The girls there all despised her and laughed at her; hardly one of them had yet even spoken to her; they seemed to think her beneath them; it was horrible; she could not stand it; it was just as if she had some disease and they were all afraid of catching it from her. "There is one girl," sobbed Claire, with her arms round her father's neck and her head on his dear, kindly breast, "that I know I shall slap or throw something at if I stay. She has red hair and very white skin, with little freckles all over it, and she is quite fat. She wears a different dress every day, and it's always something handsome but queer to look at.... I heard her tell another girl that all her clothes came from Paris. She brings two bananas for lunch, and long cakes spread over with chocolate, that spirt out something soft and yellow, like custard, when she bites into them, and soil her fingers.... Well, Father, that girl sits near me, and she is always making fun of me behind my back, and whispering things about me to the others that make them burst out laughing and watch me from the corners of their eyes.... Of course this is only at recess, but at all times, Father, I can feel how they are thinking that I have no right, no business among them.... And perhaps I haven't. Oh, Father, I want to be a lady as much as you want me to be one, but ... isn't there some other way of learning how? If you'll only take me from that dreadful place, I'll ... I'll go anywhere else you please!" Indignant, yet pierced with sympathy for his darling, Twining promised her that she should go back no more to Mrs. Arcularius's. Claire kissed him, and then put her wet cheek against his. But an instant later she lifted her head. She had thought of her mother, who was paying one of their fellow-boarders a visit that evening, and at this very moment was stating to her hostess, with a sort of saturnine braggadocio, that Claire's new school "ought to be a regular first-class one, and no mistake, for it was going to cost a regular first-class kind of a price." "But Mother?" said Claire, in anxious query, "what will _she_ say, Father?"