"Yes," answered Miss Paget gloomily; "I have been with my father. Don't ask me anything about the last three years, Lotta. I have been utterly wretched and miserable, and I can't bear to talk about my misery." "And you shan't talk of it, darling," cried Charlotte, pursing up her mouth for a kiss in a manner which might have been distraction to a masculine mind of average susceptibility. "You shan't talk of anything or think of anything the least, least, least bit unpleasant; and you shall have my gold pencil-case," added Miss Halliday, wrenching that trinket suddenly from the ribbon by which it hung at her side. Perhaps there was just the least touch of Georgy's childishness in this impulsive habit of giving away all her small possessions, for which Lotta was distinguished. "Yes, you must, dear," she went on. "Mamma gave it me last half; but I don't want it; I don't like it; in point of fact, I have had it so long that I positively loathe it. And I know it's a poor trumpery thing, though mamma gave two guineas for it; but you know she is always imposed upon in shops. Do, do, do take it, darling, just to oblige me. And now, tell me, dear,--you're going to stop here for ever and ever, now you've come back" asked Charlotte, after having thrust the gold pencil-case into Diana's unwilling hand. "I don't know about for ever and ever, dear," Miss Paget replied presently; "but I daresay I shall stay here till I'm tired of the place and everybody about it. You won't be here very long, you know, Lotta; for you'll be twenty next birthday, and I suppose you'll be leaving school before you're twenty-one. Most of the girls leave at eighteen or nineteen at latest; and you've been here so long, and are so much farther advanced than others are. I am not going to be a pupil again--that's out of the question; for I'm just twenty-two, as you know. But Priscilla has been good enough to let me stay as a kind of second teacher for the little ones. It will be dull work going through the stupid abridgments of history and geography, and the scrappy bits of botany and conchology, with those incorrigible little ones; but of course I am very grateful to my cousin for giving me a home under any conditions, after papa's dishonourable conduct. If it were not for her, Lotta, I should have no home. What a happy girl you are, to have a respectable man for your father!" Charlotte's brow darkened a little as her friend said this.