How to round your elbows when they naturally stuck out like knitting-pins, Bridget could not conceive, and I am afraid that, pushed to desperation, she soon left off even trying, and so became more awkward than ever. But the ceremony once over, and lessons begun, Miss Tasker had no cause for complaint, for Bridget was a ready and ambitious pupil. She had a good memory, and being an imaginative child, it was a special pleasure to her to learn poetry, in repeating which she would quite forget herself and her awkwardness and pour forth page after page without a single mistake. At such times, Miss Tasker's chill remarks of "Your shoulders, Bridget"--"Don't poke, Bridget," generally fell on unheeding ears, but there was one occasion on which Bridget did feel them to be especially trying and out of place. She had been learning one of the "Lays of Ancient Rome," and was now repeating it all through. In proud consciousness of not having missed one word, and in full enjoyment of the swing of the poetry, she stood with her head thrust forward and her chin in the air: "So he spake, and speaking sheathed His good sword by his side, And with his armour on his back Plunged headlong in the tide! No sound of--" "My _dear_ Bridget, draw in your chin," said the cold voice, and poor Bridget, dropping suddenly down from the heights of heroic deeds to dreary commonplace, felt that this was hard indeed. She had said it all without a mistake, and the only thing that seemed to matter was how her chin, or her shoulders, or her arms looked. It was unkind. It was unfair. It was too bad. She could not help being awkward, and as they worried her so about it, she should not try to be any different. From this time forward she would be just herself--plain, awkward Bridget. So she resolved as she took the book back from Miss Tasker, and sat down sullenly in her place, and so she continued to resolve as several days went on. You know how, when one has once begun to be a little naughty, everything that happens seems to increase the feeling, and so it was with Bridget; everything Miss Tasker said, or did, or even looked after this, made her feel more and more ill-used and injured, till one unfortunate day brought matters to a climax.