“That’s enough of the dumps!” she said, with a vivid gesture. “You are an angel; and what are my eyes like? Dare I meet the others? or will that little duffer, Mary Molton, say, ‘What’s the matter, Bridget? Have you been _crying_?’ Come along; let’s play tennis! My style’s good enough _there_, anyway,” she added mischievously, with a flashing backward glance at Helen, who was picking her way through the wet grass. It was four years since Miss Brownrigg, departing from her “usual rule,” took a tradesman’s daughter as a boarder at Myrtle House. Times were hard in the educational as well as the outside world, and tradesmen had this saving grace,--they usually paid promptly. Besides, Bridget’s home was a distant one, and, as Miss Brownrigg remarked to her sister, it was very unlikely the other girls would ever know,--“unless, of course,” she added with a sigh, folding up a check for entrance fees paid in advance,--“unless the child is very uncouth, which is unfortunately to be expected.” Miss Brownrigg’s expectations were, however, falsified in both particulars. In the first place, Bridget was not uncouth. In the second, she speedily left no doubt in the minds of her school-fellows as to the nature of her social position. It was with considerable relief that Miss Brownrigg saw a slender, graceful little girl emerge from the cab which brought her to the door on the first day of term. “My dear Eliza,” she observed, “the child is not merely presentable,-- she is _pretty_; she has style. She is even dressed well,--simply, I’m glad to say, but _well_. We sha’n’t have much trouble.” This was when the drawing-room door had closed upon Bridget after the first interview, and she was following the maid upstairs to her bedroom,--a dejected little figure, with bent head and trembling lips. And, in the particular way she expected, Miss Brownrigg was right. The one or two hardly noticeable peculiarities of phrase and pronunciation--which to a very close observer indicated that her home was not on the same level of refinement as the rest of her school-fellows’--the child corrected herself before she had been in the house a month. She never made a mistake twice. The English teacher, who was observant, noticed that she was at first morbidly sensitive on the subject. Her mental character, as disclosed in the monthly conclave of teachers, was rather distractingly diverse. She was a dunce, incorrigibly idle, and a genius, according to varying accounts; but they all with one accord lifted up their voices and denounced her iniquities. With the girls her popularity was undeniable, and the public disclosure of her social status notwithstanding, she retained it during the whole of her school life.