'Yes I know,' said Maud, 'but I can't help it. Those horrid kings of Israel and Judah! They made Israel to sin, they make me to sin, indeed they do. Jehoshaphat, Jehoiakim, Jonadab, Jehu--all wicked--all beginning with J--how can any one remember them?' 'Then, my dear,' her inexorable monitress would reply, 'you can never know what every well-educated young lady, what every mere school-child, is acquainted with. How can you be fit to go into the world?' 'I wish,' said Maud, passionately, in despair at the difficulties of existence, 'that when the tribes got lost they had taken their histories with them, and lost them too. Darling Goody, let me learn texts, hymns, all the Sermon on the Mount, as much poetry as you please, only not those dreadful Chronicles!' Maud used on these occasions to throw her arms round Goody's neck in an outbreak of affectionate repentance, in a way that the elder lady, who was absurdly impressionable, found it difficult to resist. But Miss Goodenough's kindness made Maud's conscience all the less at ease. Calmness, self-restraint, composure, a well-stocked mind, and sensible judgment were, Miss Goodenough told her, the great excellencies of character to be aimed at. Maud looked into herself, and felt, with agonies of self-reproach, that in every particular she fell miserably short; that she was the very reverse of calm; the least thing roused her into passion, or sent her spinning from the summit of serene high spirits to the lowest depths of despair; as for self-restraint, Maud felt she was just as capable of it as of flying to the moon. From time to time she made violent efforts to be diligent, and set to work with sudden zeal upon books which her instructress assured her were most interesting and improving. These attempts, for the most part, collapsed in grievous failure. Improvement, Maud felt ruefully, there might be, though unbeknown to herself; interest, she was certain, there was none. On the other hand, a chance novel, which had somehow or other passed scatheless through the rigid blockade which Miss Goodenough established around her young ladies, had filled her with a sort of ecstacy of excitement; and no amount of poetry--no such amount, at any rate, as came within the narrow limits of her mistress's literary horizon--seemed capable of fatiguing or even of satisfying her. Displaying the most complete inaptitude for every other form of diligence, she was ready enough to learn any amount that any one liked to give her. She even signalised her zeal by the spasmodic transcription of her favourite passages into a precious volume marked with a solemn 'Private,' protected from profane eyes by a golden padlock and destined by its proprietress to be the depository of all her intellectual treasures.