The Monday morning, to which Fan had been looking forward with considerable apprehension, brought no new and frightful experience: she was not caught up and instantly plunged fathoms down beyond her depth into that great cold ocean of knowledge; on the contrary, Miss Churton merely took her for a not unpleasant ramble along the margin--that old familiar margin where she had been accustomed to stray and dabble and paddle in the safe shallows. Miss Churton was only making herself acquainted with her pupil's mind, finding out what roots of knowledge already existed there on which to graft new branches; and we know that the time Fan had spent in the Board School had not been wasted. Miss Churton was not shocked nor disappointed as her mother had been: the girl had made some progress, and what she had learnt had not been wholly forgotten. If this easy going over old ground was a relief to Fan, she experienced another and even a greater relief in her teacher's manner towards her. She was gentle, patient, unruffled, explaining things so clearly, so forcibly, so fully, as they had never been explained before, so that learning became almost a delight; but with it all there was not the slightest approach to that strange tenderness in speech and manner which Fan had expected and had greatly feared. Feared, because she felt now that she could not have resisted it; and how strange it seemed that her finest quality, her best virtue, had become in this instance her greatest enemy, and had to be fought against, just as some fight against the evil that is in them.