“If you are not, I should like to know who is!” demanded her schoolfellow, emphatically. “You are one day at the top of the tree, the head of the first class, the best pupil Herr Kroot ever had, adored by the Harpies”--here Miss Blewitt alluded to her respected instructress and daughters--“always exquisitely dressed, with heaps of pocket-money, sleeping in the best room, allowed a fire in winter, every extra--claret and coffee--and I don’t know _what_! After years and years of this style of thing, and when you are seventeen, and almost finished, your father suddenly stops supplies, you are not paid for for three whole terms, and the hateful Harpies make you into a regular drudge--a pupil-teacher, a nursery governess, a servant! You sleep in the attic with those odious little Smiths--wash, dress, and teach them; you go messages to the shops, and even into Riverside--you, who were never allowed to stir one yard alone; you mend and darn and teach.” She paused, not from lack of words, but from want of breath. “And a very good thing that I _can_ do something to pay for my living,” remarked the other, with composure. “If I could not sew and mend and teach, what would become of me, I should be glad to know? I could scarcely expect the Harpers to go on keeping me at their own expense; and now I take the fifth class, the little ones’ music, and I save a servant for those Indian children, I work for my bread--and I am worth it.” “I should rather think you were,” rejoined her listener, sarcastically. “You are worth a hundred a year to them as teacher, besides being dressmaker and nursery-maid. It makes me wild--I feel quite crazy--when I see all that they get out of you, early and late, and the shameful way they treat you! Once upon a time you were ‘darling Madeline’--their ‘dear, bright-faced girl,’ their ‘model pupil,’ now you are ‘Madeline West,’ or ‘Miss West,’ and you are ‘slow,’ ‘awkward,’ ‘lazy,’ and ‘impertinent.’ Oh dear me! dear me! sometimes I feel as if I should like to fly at Miss Selina and bite a piece out of her, I am so savage.” “I hope to goodness you will restrain your feelings,” said Madeline, with a smile, as she threaded a long needleful of black wool, and commenced on a gaping heel. “The Harpers are only human, after all! It was very hard on them, my father having failed; and all my music-lessons, and painting, and singing, and German, for two terms, had to be paid for out of their own pockets. Signor Squaletti charges half a guinea an hour. Then there were my clothes. I feel hot all over when I remember the quantity of money I laid out, believing that it would be all settled, as usual, by father’s cheque at Christmas. There was that white dress for the breaking-up party----” “In which you made such an impression on the Wolfertons’ friend, young Mr. Wynne,” interrupted Florence, with a meaning nudge. “Oh yes, I remember the white dress!”