It is true that at first it is painful to stand up with the little class--herself a giant among pigmies; to be conscious of a sneering smile on the part of the teacher as she draws a parallel between her bodily height and her dwarfish information. It is mortifying to know that her dresses have been discovered, by their misfit, to have belonged to other parties--that the discrepancies between her own initials and those on her linen have not been overlooked--and to feel that the absence of a weekly allowance, and regular home correspondence, are never-failing sources of unsympathising wonder. All this is mortifying enough, but it is not all she has to undergo. After rising early, and lying down late, and eating the bread of carefulness, she finds that even the rigid performance of her own duties, and the neglected work of half-a-dozen people besides, meets at first with but little encouragement from the mistress of the house, who receives it purely as a matter of course, while it does not fail to awaken the distrust and jealousy of her subordinates. The cook remembers her refusal to connive at the abstraction of 'a dust of tea,' even when the key of the storeroom was actually in her hand; and the housemaid bears in mind that Miss Johnson would have bestowed upon her her last year's cloak on the arrival of her new _visite_, had not the half-boarder suggested the necessity for asking leave. The French teacher does not forget that, on the only occasion in which she indulged in a little harmless flirtation with a whiskered cousin of her own, the half-boarder looked reproof; the English teacher remembers her refusal furtively to procure sundry little delicacies not included in the daily bill of fare; while her assistant notes her strenuous efforts to qualify herself to supersede her in her own department. All these offences are registered and retaliated. The cook, when reproved for any omission, stoutly declares that orders transmitted through Miss Armstrong never reach her; the housemaid, in waiting at table, contrives that the least savoury _plat_ shall fall to her lot; the Parisienne shrugs her shoulders as she comments on her air _bourgeois_; the English teacher frankly declares she never could like her; whilst her subordinate sister 'hopes' that Miss Armstrong may prove as simple as she appears.