Sometimes in May mornings the children would gather hawthorn branches out of the lanes, and make what they liked to call garlands for themselves. The white blossoms looked pretty in Rhoda's dark hair; and Mademoiselle coming to give them their music-lesson, would find the little girls crowned with May-flower wreaths. It was hard work settling down to lessons on those days. How slowly the clocks ticked when the practice hour began; how the little birds would come hopping on the window-ledge, before Dolly had half finished her sum; how cruel it was of Mademoiselle to pull down the blind and frighten the poor little birds away. Many pictures in Dolly's gallery belong to this bit of her life. It seems one long day as she looks back to it, for when the sun set Dolly too used to be put to bed. As for little Rhoda she would be sent back to Old Street. When prayers were over, long after Dolly was asleep, she would creep upstairs alone to the very top of the house, and put herself to bed and blow out her own candle if Zoe did not come for it. How bare and chill and lonely it was to be all by oneself at the top of that busy house! 'I don't think they would come, even if I screamed,' Rhoda would think as she lay staring at the cupboard-door, and wondering if there was any one behind it. Once the door burst open and a great cat jumped out, and Rhoda's shriek brought up one of John Morgan's pupils, who had been reading in his room. 'Is anything the matter?' said the young man at the door. 'Oh, no, no--o! Please don't say I screamed?' said little Rhoda, disappearing under the bed-clothes. 'Silly child!' (This was Aunt Morgan's voice in the passage.) 'Thank you, Mr. Raban, I will go to her. A little girl of ten years old frightened at a cat! For shame, Rhoda! There--go to sleep directly,' and her Aunt Morgan vigorously tucked her up and gave her a kiss. The Morgans were a cheerful and noisy household; little Rhoda lived there, but she scarcely seemed to belong to it: she was like a little stray waif born into some strange nest full of active, early, chirping birds, all bigger and stronger than herself. The Rev. John Morgan was master of the nest, which his step-mother kept in excellent order and ruled with an active rod. There were two pupils, two younger brothers, two sisters, and Rhoda Parnell, the forlorn little niece they had adopted. Downstairs the fat parlour-maid and the old country cook were established, and a succeeding generation of little charity-boys, who were expected by Mrs. Morgan to work in the garden, go errands, and learn their catechisms, while blacking the young gentlemen's boots in a vault-like chamber set apart for that purpose.